Living Document II: International literature and Belgian mental health (care) data

Covid-19 has had a big impact on many aspects of our life including mental health. Since the start of the pandemic, a whole body of research has been performed on the relation between covid-19 and mental health (care). The mental health (care) working group of the Superior Health Council has performed a systematic review of national and international peer reviewed studies to generate recommendations to policy makers and the general public. 

In the first advisory report, published in May 2020, the focus was put on international literature about contagious outbreaks, given the fact that not many covid-19 studies were published yet. The literature was then discussed within a multidisciplinary expert group and transformed into policy advice. This advice can be found here: https://www.health.belgium.be/en/report-9589-mental-health-and-covid-19  
In a second advice, an update of the literature review was performed, focusing specifically on peer reviewed literature about covid-19. In this update, predominantly, studies about the first wave of the pandemic were analyzed and transformed into policy advice. 

Within this living document the findings from the national and international peer-reviewed literature review will be linked to the findings stemming from the data in the Belgian Mental Health (Care) Data Repository (cf. living document I) in order to permit contextualization and/or translation to the Belgian context, whenever necessary, or to further validate the international research findings. This document will be updated regularly, on a weekly basis to begin with.