It’s gone, it’s back: A prospective study on the COVID-19 pandemic-related shortages and mental health of Australian families

ABSTRACT

Our aim was to explore the association between COVID-19 pandemic-related product shortages and symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression in Australian families, concurrently and longitudinally, while controlling for demographic, health, and psychological characteristics. This prospective study used two waves of data (baseline, Time 0 = April 2020; Time 1 = May 2020) from a longitudinal cohort study of Australian parents of a child aged 0‐18 years. Parents were surveyed at baseline about whether they had experienced product shortages related to COVID-19. DASS21 was used to measure symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress at both waves. The sample included 2,110 participants (N = 1,701, 80.6% mothers). About 68.6% of the respondents reported being impacted by one or more shortages. Product shortages correlated significantly with higher combined and individual scores for anxiety, depression, and stress (r = 0.007 to 0.18, all p < 0.001) at baseline. At Time 1, parental emotion regulation explained 4.0% of the variance (p < .001). Our findings suggest a role for improving parental emotion regulation in coping with stressors, such as shortages and lockdowns.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• families
• longitudinal
• mental health
• parents
• product shortages

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

AMW, MS and EW conceived the study. EW collected data. MS and EW conducted analysis. AMW, MS and EW interpreted data. AMW drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to and approved the final draft of the manuscript. AMW is accepting full responsibility for the conduct of the study. She has access to the data and has control of the decision to publish.

Consent to participate

Participants provided informed written consent.

Data accessibility statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the senior author. The data are not publicly available due to restrictions.

Ethics approval

The study received approval from the Deakin University Human Ethics Advisory Group.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.