Perceived psychosocial health and its sociodemographic correlates in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a community-based online study in China

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been affecting people’s psychosocial health and well-being through various complex pathways. The present study aims to investigate the perceived psychosocial health and its sociodemographic correlates among Chinese community-dwelling residents.Methods: This cross-sectional survey was carried out online and using a structured questionnaire during April 2020. In total, 4788 men and women with the age range of 11-98 years from eight provinces in eastern, central and western China were included in the analysis. We adopted a tactical approach to capture three key domains of perceived psychosocial health that are more likely to occur during a pandemic including hopelessness, loneliness, and depression. Multiple regression method, binary logistic regression model and variance inflation factor (VIF) were used to conduct data analysis.Results: Respectively 34.8%, 32.5% and 44.8% of the participants expressed feeling more hopeless, lonely, and depressed during the pandemic. The percentage of all three indicators was comparatively higher among women than among men: hopelessness (50.7% vs 49.3%), loneliness (52.4% vs 47.6%), and depression (56.2% vs 43.8%). Being married was associated with lower odds of loneliness among men (odds ratio [OR] = 0.63, 95%CI: 0.45-0.90). Loneliness was negatively associated with smoking (OR= 0.67, 95%CI: 0.45-0.99) and positively associated with drinking (OR= 1.45, 95%CI: 1.04-2.02). Compared with those in the lowest income bracket (< CNY 10 000), men (OR= 0.34, 95%CI: 0.21-0.55) and women (OR= 0.36, 95%CI: 0.23-0.56) in the highest level of annually housed income (> CNY 40 000) had the lowest odds of reporting perceived hopelessness (OR= 0.35, 95%CI: 0.25-0.48). Smoking also showed negative association with depression only among men (OR= 0.63, 95%CI: 0.43-0.91).Conclusions: More than one-third of the participants reported worsening in the experience of hopelessness and loneliness, with more than two-fifth of worsening depression during the pandemic compared with before the outbreak. Several socioeconomic and lifestyle factors were found to be associated with the outcome variables, most notably participants’ marital status, household income, smoking, alcohol drinking, existing chronic conditions. These findings may be of significance to treat patients and help them recover from the pandemic.