Capic, Tanja, Youssef, George, Lycett, Kate, Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Matthew, Khor, Sarah, Frykberg, Georgie, Crowe, Mallery, Teague, Samantha, Olsson, Craig, Cummins, Robert, and Hutchinson, Delyse (2025) Mental distress and subjective wellbeing in Australian parents: A pre-pandemic versus pandemic four-year national survey. Journal of Affective Disorders, 392. 120088.

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Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted parents' mental health globally, yet few studies have examined long-term patterns in parents' mental health since the pandemic, and most lack pre-pandemic comparison data. This study addresses these gaps by examining mental distress and subjective wellbeing in Australian parents across four pandemic years, and relative to pre-pandemic. Methods Parents were adults living with children (N = 3403) from a repeated national cross-sectional survey, representative of Australian parents in age, gender, partner status and geographical location. Patterns of mental health were estimated by regressing mental distress (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress) and subjective wellbeing (i.e., Life satisfaction, Personal Wellbeing Index, and satisfaction with seven life domains) onto survey year (pre-pandemic: 2013, pandemic: 2020–2023). Results Parents' depression, anxiety and stress levels were consistently above pre-pandemic levels during the four years, with anxiety and depression levels being 32 % and 35 % higher than pre-pandemic in 2023, respectively. This coincided with a substantial drop in life satisfaction to below-normative levels in 2023. While satisfaction with personal safety was above pre-pandemic levels during 2021–23, satisfaction with health, standard of living, and future security was lower in 2022–23 compared to first two years. These effects were more pronounced and sustained for mothers, particularly on anxiety, stress and satisfaction with health. Conclusion Four years into the pandemic, many Australian parents faced challenges with chronic mental health issues. Access to wholistic mental health services, along with financial supports for struggling families, are essential to supporting parental mental health in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Item ID:	89652
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1573-2517
Copyright Information:	© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	25 Nov 2025 00:31
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