It’s now been more than a year since the COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed the lives of people around the world. The virus brought immense feelings of stress, worry, fear, anger, loneliness, and for many, grief.
Sunday Citizen used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, which collected responses biweekly between April 2020 and February 2021, to compile statistics on anxiety, depression, and mental health activities in every state and Washington D.C. The data from this story covers two periods of time during the pandemic: April 23 to May 5, 2020 and Feb. 17 to March 1, 2021, with the most recent dataset released on March 10, 2021.
The Census Bureau uses representative sample sizes and population estimates to determine the people’s frequency of anxiety and depression per week in every state, as well as the percentage of the population that receives therapy or takes prescription medication. The frequency rates are categorized as follows: “rarely” means no days at all, “occasionally” means several days a week, “frequently” means more than half of the week, and “did not report” means that data was not available for that percentage of the population.
Continue reading for statistics surrounding mental health in your state during COVID-19.