Bad days build better days: mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with psychosocial distress

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and associated countermeasures had an immensely disruptive impact on people’s lives. Due to the lack of systematic pre-pandemic data, however, it is still unclear how individuals’ psychosocial health has been affected across this incisive event. In this study, we analyze longitudinal data from two healthy samples ( N = 307) to provide insight into the full trajectory of psychosocial burden before (baseline), during the first peak, and at a relative downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our data indicated a medium rise in psychosocial strain from baseline to the first peak of the pandemic ( d = 0.40). Surprisingly, this was overcompensated by a large decrease of perceived burden until downturn ( d = − 0.93), resulting in a positive overall effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health ( d = 0.44). Accounting for this paradoxical positive effect, our results reveal that the postpandemic increase in mental health is driven by individuals that were already facing psychosocial challenges before the pandemic. These findings suggest that coping with acute challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic can stabilize previously impaired mental health through reframing processes.