Existing research has found adverse short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, but longer-term effects have been less documented. Using newly released register data on all general practitioner consultations in Norway through 2020 (about 14 million consultations in total), we find that during the spring and early summer 2020, the number of psychological cases initially increased relative to prior years, but then fell back towards the level of prior years during the summer 2020. In early September 2020, the number of cases accelerated, a pattern that held up through December 2020, so that the gap between 2020 and prior years became largest end-of-year. Our findings suggest that the accumulated adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health far exceeds the short-term effects. The effects are particularly strong for females and for residents in urban areas.

现有研究发现 COVID-19 大流行对心理健康的短期不利影响，但长期影响的记录较少。使用新发布的截至 2020 年挪威所有全科医生咨询的登记数据（总共约 1400 万次咨询），我们发现在 2020 年春季和初夏，心理病例的数量最初相对于往年有所增加，但随后又回落在 2020 年夏季，接近往年水平。在 2020 年 9 月上旬，病例数量加速增长，这种模式一直持续到 2020 年 12 月，因此 2020 年与往年之间的差距成为年底最大。我们的研究结果表明，COVID-19 大流行对心理健康的累积不利影响远远超过短期影响。