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The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented influence on the global economy and population health. Vigorous, well-designed studies with complete, long-term follow-up of high risk groups including COVID-19 patients, their families and frontline workers are imperative for a comprehensive understanding of the mental health impact of the pandemic. The Nordic-Baltic national registries and biobank resources provide a unique opportunity to gain critical insight into the interplay between mental and somatic health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVIDMENT consortium leverages an extensive research experience and infrastructure from ongoing collaborations between four Nordic countries and Estonia, including national registry resources (est. >24 million individuals) and new COVID-19 cohorts with questionnaire data (est. > 220.000 individuals), to significantly advance current knowledge of mental morbidity trajectories in the COVID-19 pandemic. This program will address the following specific aims: 1) The role of preexisting psychiatric disorders in subsequent risk and progression of a COVID-19 infection. 2) The impact of COVID-19 on short and long-term psychiatric sequel among COVID-19 patients, their families and frontline workers. 3) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population mental health by the varying mitigating responses and corresponding COVID-19 related mortality rates across 4 Nordic countries and Estonia. These data sources and research plan, along with preliminary results will be presented.

Abstract Body

The H2020/PERISCOPE project, including 32 partners from European universities & agencies, began 1st November 2020 and will last 36 months.

The overarching objectives of PERISCOPE are to map and analyse the unintended impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak; develop solutions and guidance for policymakers and health authorities on how to mitigate the impact of the outbreak; enhance Europe’s preparedness for future similar events; and reflect on the future multi-level governance in the health as well as other domains affected by the outbreak.

During this session we will report about early lessons learnt from the mapping and assessments of the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on mental health at national and subnational level in the EU with respect to individuals, communities and societies. Further, we will comment on their comparability. The aim is to explore differences between countries regarding the occurrence of mental ill health, and especially the impact on vulnerable groups, and how this is related to exposure to SARS-CoV-2, differences in policies over time, and effects on the economy.

We will reflect on the short- and long-term consequences on mental health and health inequalities, report on the ongoing development of holistic policy guidelines for health authorities & other authorities, and from the analysis of multilevel governance, at local, regional and national level, memberstate – EU-level, and EU - global governance level.

PERISCOPE will continue collecting data and updating a common data ”Atlas”, which would lead the consortium to engage in modelling and experiments to provide “continuous nowcasting” of the outbreak.