I've been working as a psychiatrist since prior to the pandemic. Certainly, everyone simultaneously dealing with an unflinching stressor led to a huge increase in adjustment disorders, though I will say that from a mood/anxiety standpoint, people proved more resilient than I would've assumed -- it's a testament to the human ability to adjust to things.

It would be interesting to see self reports like these plotted alongside diagnosis rates of disorders like Major Depressive or Generalized Anxiety disorders. The pandemic also happened to crop up during a societal shift in mindfulness and public identification of mental health issues, which even several years prior would have been more of a taboo to disclose. The truth is that nearly 100% of people experience at least transient, clinically significant periods of sadness or worry in their lives, and there's no way to know which proportion of any of these respondents would meet threshold for any kind of diagnosis.

In spite of the upward trend of the chart, I think this reflects a positive trend overall. Stressed or sad people who answered yes to this survey are either seeking help or more likely to do so than the people in this survey who feel the same way inside but said no when asked. Over the course of my brief career so far I've already seen a shift in people's engagement in care. I hope it continues