Covid-19: The pandemic has not caused a lasting increase in anxiety disorders in France, according to a study

"Unlike depressive episodes, the prevalence of which increased significantly between 2017 and 2021 (...), the frequency of anxiety states remained stable," summarizes this study. The Covid pandemic, which in 2020 resulted in health restrictions of unprecedented magnitude with strict lockdowns in many countries, is generally considered to be a factor that has aggravated many mental disorders.

A major review published in 2021 in The Lancet concluded that depressive and anxiety disorders had worsened during the pandemic. Researchers from Santé publique France therefore sought to test the hypothesis "that anxiety states could have increased following the health crisis." However, the results were inconclusive.

At the end of the study, conducted by telephone survey of thousands of French people using a questionnaire measuring the main anxiety symptoms, the figures remained broadly the same between 2017 and 2021. The seven questions asked included, for example, the frequency with which the person experiences a "feeling of fear as if something horrible was going to […] happen", or their ability to "sit quietly doing nothing and (feel) relaxed".

The results are considered worrying by the researchers, with 12.5% of those surveyed experiencing anxiety symptoms. And they correspond to social inequalities: they appear to be more common among people experiencing financial difficulties or with low levels of education. However, the Covid pandemic has not made things worse.