ArticleDepression and anxiety2026
Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Network Analysis.
Article in Depression and anxiety, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rethinking mental disorders in COVID-19: evidence from prepandemic longitudinal data.Current opinion in psychiatry · 2026Review
- The Relationship Between Anxiety, Depressive Symptoms, and Psychological Crisis in College Students: A Longitudinal Network Analysis.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Network Analysis.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
20 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Despite the societal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, research assessing changes in symptoms of anxiety and depression following the sanitary crisis has reported heterogeneous evidence, especially among individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions. Most earlier studies used summary scores of depression or anxiety assessment surveys, which does not provide insights into changes in individual symptoms and symptom structure during the pandemic. Objective: This study used a network analysis to investigate the symptom structure of anxiety and depressive symptoms and temporal changes in symptoms across three timepoints before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample primarily of persons with anxiety and depressive disorders. Methods: Data are retrieved from 675 participants of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA) and Netherlands Study of Depression in Older Persons (NESDO) cohorts who completed all three timepoints. Anxiety and depressive symptoms were assessed using the Beck anxiety inventory (BAI) and the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self-Rated (QIDS-SR). Symptom networks were estimated for three timepoints: pre-COVID, first COVID-peak (April 2020), second COVID-peak (January/February 2021), and compared. Symptom importance was quantified using centrality indices (strength, betweenness, and closeness), and temporal stability was assessed using the network comparison test (NCT). Results: The symptom networks were largely consistent between the two COVID-19 peak timepoints but differed significantly from the pre-COVID network in terms of global strength. Fear-related anxiety symptoms, sleep-related symptoms, and thoughts of death or suicide demonstrated greater strength centrality at the pre-COVID timepoint compared to both COVID-19 peak timepoints. Conclusion: Our findings illustrate that a stressful situation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can result in changes in the complex associations of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Unexpectedly, anxiety symptom networks shifted from being driven by somatic fear responses before the pandemic, toward greater prominence of cognitive appraisal symptoms during the pandemic. Network insights could help focus intervention planning by targeting the key symptoms of anxiety and depression.
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.