Works in progress
Although Viktor Zhdanov's name is little known today, he spearheaded one of the greatest projects in history. Who was he and what did he do?
Covid-19 brought death, suffering and financial straits, so it was unsurprising that depression rose around the world. But when the data came in, we found suicide did not – and it’s a mystery why.
First, are we sure all of that is true? I won’t waste your time listing the evidence that life got more depressing, but what about the other two?
Ettman et al. conveniently had data from nationally representative surveys about how many Americans were depressed before COVID-19. They found another nationally representative sample and asked them the same questions in late March/early April 2020, when the first wave of US cases and lockdowns was at its peak. They found that 3 times as many people had at least one depression symptom, and 5–10x as many people scored in the range associated with “moderately severe” or “severe” depression.
This is a good study. It’s published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a good journal. It’s been cited 50+ times in 6 months. Really the only thing anyone could have against it is the implausibly large effect it found. But it matches similar studies from Australia, Portugal, and around the world. Let’s say it’s real.
