Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's

news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.

If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, Dr. Colleen Berry, the chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management

at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with Dr. Beth McGinty,

a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and lead author

of a new study on COVID-19, psychological distress, and loneliness.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Also joining the conversation is Dr. Danny Fallon, chair of the Department of Mental Health. They discuss

how to lower anxiety and protect our mental health as we move into the summer months of the COVID-19

pandemic. Let's listen. Beth McGinty and Danny Fallon, thank you both for joining me today.

Beth, let's start with you.

You are the lead author of a new study in JAMA on psychological distress, loneliness, and COVID-19.

Can you share a little about the study and its findings?

Sure. Thanks for having me.

We did a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States, and we measured their psychological distress using a validated measure called the Kessler 6 in April of 2020,

right, at the height of the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we found that psychological distress was quite elevated. In April

2020, the proportion of people with serious psychological distress was 13.6% relative to only 3.9% in 2018, which is the most recent year of pre-COVID data available.

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