SynthesisInternational journal of environmental research and public health2023
The Association of Social Support and Loneliness with Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta-Analysis.
Synthesis in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of green exercise on mental health: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Association of social isolation, loneliness and risk of cardiovascular diseases: Meta-analysis of cohort studies.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- An umbrella review of the prevalence of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: Call to action for post-COVID-19 at the global level.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Sleep-Timing Types and Weekend Catch-Up Sleep Patterns Associated With Above-Threshold Anxiety Symptoms in College Students: 28-Day Objective Monitoring.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2026Article
- Associations of changes in social isolation and loneliness with all-cause mortality among older adults: a prospective cohort study.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Loneliness, depression, and generalized anxiety across eight countries.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Changes in social health among older adults: a random intercept latent transition analysis from China.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Development and Initial Validation of a Brief, Online Version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D): Psychometric Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- How social support impacts depression in Chinese emerging adults: mediators of cognitive reappraisal and loneliness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Anxiety and depression symptoms in adolescents: a cross-sectional study, Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, 2024.Epidemiologia e servicos de saude : revista do Sistema Unico de Saude do Brasil · 2026Article
- The Bidirectional Relationships Between Shyness, Loneliness and Depressive Symptoms in Chinese Adolescents.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2025Article
- Correlates of Loneliness in Parkinson Disease During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Relationship Between Fatigue, Perceived Social Support and Symptomatology of Long-COVID Patients in Spain.Scandinavian journal of caring sciences · 2025Observational
- Social support, financial status, and depression among French healthcare workers one year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Automated depression detection via cloud based EEG analysis with transfer learning and synchrosqueezed wavelet transform.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Depressive Symptoms and Risk Factors During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among People with/Without Mental Disorders.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Exploring the effects of perceived social support and psychological distress through mediation and multigroup analyses in work-related quality of life.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Past trends and future projections of psychological distress among general population in Finland.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Anxiety and perceived social support as moderators of cognitive and emotional well-being in populations affected by COVID-19.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Psychometric properties of the ultra-brief self-report Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) to assess anxiety and depression in Arabic-speaking adults.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundResearch suggests that changes in social support and loneliness have affected mental disorder symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are a lack of studies comparing the robustness of these associations.
aimsThe aims were to estimate the strength of the associations of loneliness and social support with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) in the general population.
methodThe method entailed a systematic review and random-effects meta-analysis of quantitative studies.
resultsSeventy-three studies were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled correlations of the effect size of the association of loneliness with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress were 0.49, 0.40, and 0.38, respectively. The corresponding figures for social support were 0.29, 0.19, and 0.18, respectively. Subgroup analyses revealed that the strength of some associations could be influenced by the sociodemographic characteristics of the study samples, such as age, gender, region, and COVID-19 stringency index, and by methodological moderators, such as sample size, collection date, methodological quality, and the measurement scales.
conclusionsSocial support had a weak association with mental disorder symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic while the association with loneliness was moderate. Strategies to address loneliness could be highly effective in reducing the impact of the pandemic on social relationships and mental health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.