ArticleBMJ open2025
Financial hardship and psychological distress during and after COVID-19 lockdowns in Victoria, Australia: a secondary data analysis of four repeated state-wide surveys.
Article in BMJ open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Psychometric properties of the personal financial wellness scale in Chilean young adults.Psicologia, reflexao e critica : revista semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS · 2026Article
- Factors Predicting Financial Burden Among Family Caregivers of Dependent Stroke Survivors in Selected Tertiary Care Hospitals: A Study From Thailand.SAGE open nursingArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThis study aimed to estimate the prevalence of individuals experiencing financial hardship and to examine the relationship between their experiences of financial hardship and psychological distress during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns.
designThis is a secondary analysis of data from four repeated state-wide surveys conducted in 2020 and 2022.
settingVictoria, Australia. PARTICIPANTS AND OUTCOME MEASURES: All Victorian residents aged 18 years and above were eligible. Psychological distress was assessed using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale-6 Item version (K6), while financial hardship was assessed using a nine-item scale. Relationships between experiencing any form of financial hardship and experiencing high psychological distress (K6≥19) were evaluated using an autoregressive and cross-lagged model that used data from all four surveys.
resultsA total of 2000, 2000, 2349 and 2444 individuals responded to surveys 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. The proportion of people experiencing at least one form of financial hardship increased from 23.5% in 2020 (the first year of the pandemic) to 38.5% in 2022 (the third year of the pandemic). The most vulnerable groups facing financial hardship included young people, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders, individuals with disabilities and those with low income. The proportions of individuals experiencing high psychological distress followed a quadratic trajectory, with the peak occurring between the first and third years of the pandemic. Experiencing financial hardship was consistently associated with high psychological distress at each time point in this study. However, there was no evidence of a longitudinal relationship between financial hardship and high psychological distress.
conclusionsThe data from this study confirmed a significant increase in the proportion of individuals facing financial hardship among the adult population in Victoria from the first to the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study does not ascertain a longitudinal effect of financial hardship on psychological distress during the pandemic. Further research is warranted to confirm this finding.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.