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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in massive shifts to seemingly every aspect of daily life. At the heart of these changes have been requirements to socially distance from others and stay at home.

A number of businesses closed their doors or drastically cut back on hours and continue to do so. The result has been a historic economic recession in Canada. The drop in economic productivity has been unprecedented and millions of Canadians became unemployed after the first onset of lockdown measures.

These economic changes have resulted in much greater financial stress for many Canadians than they had faced prior to the pandemic. The financial fallout of the pandemic often loomed larger than the health threat.

Our recently published study suggests that financial stress during the first several months of pandemic was not the same for all Canadians.

Instead, Canadians who already had poor health and finances at the start of the pandemic were most at risk. In March 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 outbreak in Canada, we collaborated with the Angus Reid Forum to conduct a national survey of about 2,500 Canadian workers. We surveyed workers across a number of levels of education, fields of expertise and occupations so that our results are broadly representative of Canadian workers at the start of the pandemic.

We then re-interviewed these same people in April, May and June of 2020, including people who were laid off, temporarily furloughed or unemployed. Each time, we asked questions about common experiences of financial stress, such as whether they had enough money for bills or basic necessities. We then examined the factors in March that lead to risks of financial stress between April and June.

Poor finances harmed mental health

We found a consistent and concerning pattern: People with financial problems at the start of the pandemic were much more likely to experience financial stress throughout the next several months.

Another prominent factor was people’s health. People with frequent symptoms of anxiety and poor physical health were much more likely to experience financial stress across the first months of the pandemic.

We also found that financial stress had substantial effects on mental health. By June, people who consistently reported financial stress in the prior months had higher levels of psychological distress than people who did not report any financial stress.

_{Fonte: <https://theconversation.com> (adapted).}