Women are more likely to drink, feel depressed during lockdown,

WOMEN were more likely to feel “downhearted or depressed” at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown.

New research on the social impact of the pandemic in Ireland found women were more likely to drink more, and much less likely to drink less, during lockdown.

Between April 23 and May 1, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) carried out a study to examine the social impact of Covid-19.

It found that almost 40pc of women felt “downhearted or depressed” at least some of the time in the four weeks before the study, compared with just over one in four men.

A similar CSO study in 2013 found that 15.1pc of women ranked their quality of life as “low” – but this had risen to 36.7pc by April 2020. For men, the figure had increased from 15.5pc to 22pc.

Claire Burke, a statistician at the CSO, said women seemed to be more worried about keeping social ties and about the impact of Covid-19 on other people.

“For example, more than one in four women (27.6pc) were ‘extremely’ concerned about somebody else’s health, compared to one in five men (20.1pc),” Ms Burke said.

The CSO said “more women than men reported an increase in alcohol consumption”.

During April, 23.4pc of women said they were drinking more compared with 20.9pc of men. And while over a quarter of men reported a decrease in their drinking last month, the figure was just 8.6pc for women.

Almost 35pc of women reported an increase in smoking, compared to one in four men.

Over half of women said they were eating more junk food in lockdown, compared with 35pc of men.

Of people who were working from home for the first time, almost half of women wanted to go back to their office once the restrictions were lifted.

Forty-eight percent of women didn’t want to keep working from home compared with 31.7pc of men.

Ms Burke said this could be “partly explained” by the findings of another recently published study which examined the effects of Covid-19 on people’s jobs and lives.

“It found that more women (21pc) than men (15pc) are caring for a dependent family member or friend because of the Covid-19 crisis.

“It also found that women are more likely to report childcare issues related to the Covid-19 crisis (9pc women compared with 6pc men) and women are finding it more difficult to work from home because of family being around – 11pc women compared with 9pc men,” Ms Burke said.

48pc of women did not want to keep working from home, while the figure was 31.7pc for men