Stress in pandemic: are women the most affected?
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(CNN) -
The year of the pandemic that will go down in history broke records for stress, worry, anger and sadness among men and women around the world, according to a new global survey on emotions in 2020.
Stress levels were those that increased the most, with a "record 40% of adults worldwide" who said they experienced stress "a lot the day before," according to Gallup's 2021 Global Emotions Index.
This is the highest level in the last 15 years, according to the report.
Globally, women with young children at home bore the brunt of the stress, worry, anger and sadness that people experienced during the 2020 pandemic.
Stress increased in half of the 116 countries studied, with "double-digit increases in stress in 21 countries," according to the report.
This means that nearly 190 million more people around the world experienced significant stress last year than in previous years.
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Illness and death from Covid-19 were obviously a major part of stress and negative emotions, as was the economic impact of the pandemic, according to the survey.
"Half of the people who were working at the time of the pandemic said they were making less money from COVID-19, and 32% of people said they had lost their jobs," wrote Jon Clifton, Gallup's global managing partner. , in your opening statement about the survey.
"In total, 80% of people said that COVID-19 affected them in some way."
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Not all countries experienced stress during 2020, the report noted.
It ranged from a maximum of 66% in Peru, "which represents a new maximum for the country," and a "minimum of 13% in Kyrgyzstan, where stress levels have been historically low and remained low in 2020," according to The report.
Negative trend continues
For 15 years in a row, the polling giant Gallup has asked people around the world about their positive and negative emotions.
For this report, Gallup surveyed nationally representative samples of 160,000 people from 116 countries during 2020 and early 2021.
As in 2019, Iraq led the world in the negative experiences index in 2020. Gallup found that 56% of Iraqis reported experiencing pain, 51% reported anger and 50% reported sadness.
Taiwan scored the lowest on the Negative Emotion Index, the same ranking it did in 2019.
Globally, the rise in negative emotions actually started 10 years ago, according to the report.
A key reason is political and economic turmoil.
Partly for these reasons, residents of Lebanon and Turkey reported few positive experiences in the survey.
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"Most Lebanese have not experienced enjoyment in their daily life since 2018, and for Turks, this has been the case since 2017," the report said.
In addition to the political and economic turmoil, another source of negativity in many nations was the growing belief that both governments and businesses are corrupt.
"Most people believe that corruption is widespread in governments in 79 out of 101 countries and parts of the world, and a majority in 85 out of 110 countries think this is true in business," Clifton wrote in his introduction.
Income inequality is another factor that influences the way people view their lives, Clifton continued: "Many countries that report high income inequality are also those that report a lot of negative emotions, such as anger."
Resilience prevails
Although negative emotions increased, many people around the world displayed surprising resilience, according to the survey.
For their index of positive emotions, the survey group asked questions about feeling respected and well rested, engaging in interesting or enjoyable activities, and smiling and laughing.
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The results showed that, worldwide, humanity managed to remain stable in terms of positive emotions despite the negative impact of the pandemic, with the exception of laughter and smile.
"In the span of a year, the percentage of people who said they smiled or laughed a lot the day before dropped from 75% to 70%, which is also the lowest measure Gallup has recorded for this question," the report says.
El Salvador led the world in positivity, scoring 82 on the index.
Latin American countries have traditionally dominated the optimism index, and Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Colombia also scored high.
Three Nordic countries, Iceland, Norway and Finland, traditionally in the top 10 in national happiness rankings, also scored high.
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The United States is not in the top 10 for optimism.
However, Gallup interviews conducted for the poll in early 2021 surrounding the approval of the vaccines revealed that people's valuation of their lives rebounded and reached "new all-time highs," according to the report.
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