ArticlePloS one2025
Mental health in Germany before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Did aging-related beliefs and behaviors change during the COVID-19 pandemic?European journal of ageing · 2026Article
- Depressive and anxiety symptoms among adults in Germany: Results from the RKI Panel 'Health in Germany' 2024.Journal of health monitoring · 2025Article
- Impact of social isolation on mental health changes by socio-economic status: A moderated mediation analysis among non-migrant, migrant, and refugee subpopulations in Germany, 2016-2020.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Longitudinal patterns of mental well-being over four years in a german general population sample: a growth mixture modeling approach.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Trajectories of Mental Distress and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Healthcare Workers.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Based on nationally representative panel data (N person-years = 40,020; N persons = 18,704; Panel Labour Market and Social Security; PASS) from 2018 to 2022, we investigate how mental health changed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ time-distributed fixed effects regressions to show that mental health (Mental Health Component Summary Score of the SF-12) decreased from the first COVID-19 wave in 2020 onward, leading to the most pronounced mental health decreases during the Delta wave, which began in August 2021. In the summer of 2022, mental health had not returned to baseline levels. An analysis of the subdomains of the mental health measure indicates that long-term negative mental health changes are mainly driven by declines in psychological well-being and calmness. Furthermore, our results indicate no clear patterns of heterogeneity between age groups, sex, income, education, migrant status, childcare responsibilities or pre-COVID-19 health status. Thus, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a uniform effect on mental health in the German adult population and did not lead to a widening of health inequalities in the long run.
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