Initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic on real-life well-being, social contact and roaming behavior in patients with schizophrenia, major depression and healthy controls: A longitudinal ecological momentary assessment study

The COVID-19 pandemic strongly impacted people's daily lives. However, it remains unknown how the pandemic situation affects daily-life experiences of individuals with preexisting severe mental illnesses (SMI). In this real-life longitudinal study, the acute onset of the COVID19 pandemic in Germany did not cause the already low everyday well-being of patients with schizophrenia (SZ) or major depression (MDD) to decrease further. On the contrary, healthy participants' well-being, anxiety, social isolation, and mobility worsened, especially in healthy individuals at risk for mental disorder, but remained above the levels seen in patients. Despite being stressful for healthy individuals at risk for mental disorder, the COVID-19 pandemic had little additional influence on daily-life well-being in psychiatric patients with SMI. This high (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license