Culture and mental health resilience in times of COVID-19

Global prevalence of post-COVID-19 sleep disturbances in adults at different follow-up time points: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Our systematic review and meta-analysis estimated the prevalence of post-COVID sleep disturbances in adult population. We systematically searched relevant studies from four databases that reported post-COVID sleep disturbances prevalence with a mean or median follow-up duration of ≥28 days. We identified 153 eligible papers, with a total COVID-19 population of 252437. Employing multilevel mixed-effects meta-analyses, we estimated the overall pooled prevalence of post-COVID sleep disturbances being 28.98% (25.73-32.34), with the highest prevalence reported in Europe and the lowest in Southeast Asia. Poor sleep quality was the most prevalent definition of sleep disturbances, followed by excessive daytime sleepiness, insomnia, sleep apnea. Prevalence estimates were notably higher when measured with Epworth sleepiness scale, or Pittsburgh sleep quality index compared to symptom questionnaires, self-reports, or personal interviews. Female sex (Odds ratio, OR = 1.59, 1.38-1.83) and severe/critical acute COVID-19 (OR = 1.36, 1.09-1.69) emerged as substantial risk factors. Our review underscore the persistent prevalence of sleep disturbances among COVID-19 survivors, and the importance of factors such as geography, definition, measures of sleep disorders, sex, and severity of acute COVID-19 infection. These findings highlight the urgent need for further investigation into the underlying molecular mechanisms driving these sleep disturbances to develop effective therapeutic strategies.

The "Great Lockdown" and cultural consumption in the UK

In this paper, we exploit a unique weekly longitudinal survey of adults in the UK purposefully collected to study consumption choices with respect to cultural content types during the first Covid-19 national lockdown (the "Great Lockdown"). We look for changes in the probability of consuming different cultural and creative types of content (Music, Movies, TV, Games, Books, Magazines and Audiobooks), as well as changes in the overall variety of consumption. We find that changes in consumption depend on the type of content. In particular, other things being equal, the likelihood of listening to Music and playing Games went up and the likelihood of reading Books went down. We find little statistically significant evidence of changes in the probability of consumption of the other types of content. We find that, while on average individuals increased the variety of their consumption, the statistical significance of this increase varied depending on the socio-demographic and economic characteristic of interest. In particular, we find evidence of an increase in the variety of consumption for those at the bottom of the distribution of socio-economic status, which speaks to the importance of access to culture and creativity during lockdown for this specific social class.

The influence of arts engagement on the mental health of isolated college students during the COVID-19 outbreak in China

Objectives

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the mental health of college students. This study aimed to investigate the buffering effect of arts engagement on anxiety and resilience in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Study design

A cross-sectional study.

Methods

The data were collected via an online survey during a wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Shanghai (March 15 to April 15, 2022). In total, 2,453 college students throughout China reported general anxiety symptom levels (according to the GAD-7), resilience (according to the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale), frequency of receptive arts engagement in the previous year, exposure to risk situations, and behavioral changes due to the pandemic.

Results

During the current stage of the pandemic, 43.7% of college students suffered from varying degrees of anxiety, and 2.6% showed severe anxiety. Gender and learning stage were not associated with anxiety. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that the decision to return to academic institution, the degree of exposure to COVID-19, and the frequency of accepting art participation and resilience could significantly predict the anxiety level of college students. Gender, study stage, behavioral changes arising from COVID-19, and exposure to COVID-19 significantly predict the resilience level of college students. There was an association between high frequency music activities, reading activities and low anxiety level (p < 0.001). There was an association between high frequency digital art, music activities, reading and high resilience (p < 0.01).

Conclusions

Arts engagement appears to help students cope with mental health problems and those at risk. Policymakers should encourage college students to participate in art activities, especially in the context of social distancing.

Narrative resilience in the cross-regional support of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 outbreak: The Chinese experiences of cultural input

The healthcare staff who supported Wuhan's rescue work were the first batch of cross-regional supporters during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. To determine the cultural factors that affected their mental health and resilience, as well as the processes that organizations and individuals underwent to transform cultural resources into benefits. This study collected narrative materials in the form of national and individual statements and used Social Ecology of Resilience theory to analyse them. It identified and analysed the cultural factors of resilience in macrosystems, mesosystems, and microsystems according to four themes, namely: cognition, emotion, will, and behaviour. Altogether, it was found that the national voice adopted an optimistic narrative tone reminiscent of that used during the context of war and that the personal or public voice approved of it. The study revealed that the party and government's use of moral narration derived from its heritage culture and its belief in its continuity in new China's culture served as a mechanism of cultural resilience and mobilisation. The above is the experience of the operation of living culture (LC) and cultural heritage (CH) mentioned in Culture Based Development (CBD). In light of this, it was concluded that the predominant form of cultural input during China's national public health crisis has been storytelling with narrative resilience.

"The better you feel, the harder you fall": Health perception biases and mental health among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

The health risks of the current COVID-19 pandemic, together with the drastic mitigation measures taken in many affected nations, pose an obvious threat to public mental health. To assess predictors of poor mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study first implements survey-based measures of health perception biases among Chinese adults during the pandemic. Then, it analyzes their relation to three mental health outcomes: life satisfaction, happiness, and depression (as measured by the CES-D). We show that the health overconfidence displayed by approximately 30% of the survey respondents is a clear risk factor for mental health problems; it is a statistically significant predictor of depression and low levels of happiness and life satisfaction. We also document that these effects are stronger in regions that experienced higher numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results offer clear guidelines for the implementation of effective interventions to temper health overconfidence, particularly in uncontrollable situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Geographies of Flowers and Geographies of Flower Power

The world is changing under the pressure of environmental and health crises, and in this context, location choice and political choice become of even more poignant importance. Following a Culture-Based Development (CBD) stand, our paper highlights the link between political voting and the cultural and ecological valuation of a place. We start from the premise that the individual utility functions of the urban inhabitant and the urban voter coincide, since they both express the citizen’s satisfaction with the life in a place. We suggest that the unified citizen’s utility function is driven by a trade-off between the availability of virtual and physical spaces for interaction. We expect that this trade-off can lead to dissatisfaction with the place and consequent political discontent if the incumbents’ access to green areas and artistic environment in a place is simultaneously hampered for a long time. Our operational hypothesis is that the political sensitivity of citizens is related to the local availability of green areas (geographies of flowers) and cultural capital endowments (geographies of flower power). Using individual-level data from the WVS from the period close before the pandemic—2017–2020, we test empirically this hypothesis. We use as an outcome of interest the individual propensity to active political behaviour. We explain this propensity through the geographies of flowers (i.e., green areas) and geographies of flower power (i.e., cultural and creative industries). We compare the effects for urban and for rural areas. We find strong dependence of politically proactive behaviour on the geographies of flowers and geographies of flower power, with explicit prominence in urban areas. We find a more pronounced effect of these two geographies on the utility function of incumbent than migrant residents. We also crosscheck empirically the relationship of this CBD mechanism on an aggregate level, using data from the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor. The findings confirm the Schelling magnifying effect of micro preferences on a macro level.

School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

The spread of the novel coronavirus disease caused schools in Japan to close to cope with the pandemic. In response to the school closures, parents of students were obliged to care for their children during the daytime, when children usually were at school. Did the increase in the burden of childcare influence parents' mental health? Based on short panel data from mid-March to mid-April 2020, we explore how school closures influenced the mental health of parents with school-aged children. Using a fixed-effects model, we find that school closures led to mothers of students suffering from worse mental health compared to other females, while the fathers' mental health did not differ from that of other males. This tendency is only observed for less-educated mothers who had children attending primary school, not for those with children attending junior high school nor for more-educated mothers. The contribution of this paper is showing that school closures increased the inequality of mental health between genders and parents with different educational backgrounds.