The coronavirus generates the same anguish everywhere

Fear of infection. Loneliness. Concern for health.

When the coronavirus Crossing borders at the onset of the pandemic, calls to special hotlines providing information or assistance recorded strikingly similar concerns in every corner of the globe, from China to Lebanon, from Finland to Slovenia.

An analysis of 8 million calls to hotlines from 19 countries, published Wednesday by the journal Nature, reveals a uniform collective response in unprecedented times full of uncertainty.

The concern of the callers centered on the fear of infection, loneliness and the impact of the virus on their health. There were also fewer calls related to dating, financial problems and suicidal tendencies than before the pandemic.

Researchers from Switzerland and Germany analyzed calls in 14 European countries, the United States, China, Hong Kong, Israel and Lebanon. They took into account suicide prevention lines, as well as other lines that offered crisis counseling.

“We were surprised by the similarity in the evolution of call trends in all countries,” said Marius Brulhart, professor of economics at the University of Lausanne who led the study.

The researchers studied the calls of the first 12 weeks of the pandemic in 2020 and found that they reached their maximum volume after six weeks, when they were 35% higher than those of the same period in 2019.

They also analyzed the calls of the boreal spring of 2021 in France and Germany. They detected a direct relationship between the number of calls and the ups and downs in infections and in the restrictions imposed by governments. The concerns expressed, on the other hand, were similar to those of the early days of the pandemic.

The confinements and the order to maintain social distance generated increases in calls due to fear, loneliness and suicidal behavior or thoughts. The financial assistance that governments offered to those who lost their jobs or had to close their businesses had the opposite effect, as they “alleviated fear and concern,” the researchers noted.

Karestan Koenen, a mental health specialist at Harvard, said that the drop in calls after receiving government assistance is a relevant element, which should be taken into account by politicians.

Analyzing this information is “a very creative way to assess mental health during the pandemic” in several countries, he noted.

The concerns expressed in the calls confirm the conclusions drawn in studies of the impact of the pandemic on mental health, according to Judith Bass of the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“The idea that fear was one of the first manifestations makes sense in an investigation and also from a logical point of view,” Bass said. The virus “was something unknown, that no one had experienced.”

Bass noted that the study did not include developing countries, including those in Africa, that experienced Ebola and other outbreaks. At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, he noted, people in those nations may have had different reactions to those in other regions.

Still, the study revealed just how helpful hotlines are around the world, Bass said.

Brulhart explained that the countries used in the study were selected because they handle the information in a way that is accessible to researchers.