End of Lockdown 3.0 - Delhi Citizens Display Outstanding Mental Wellbeing Index, Ahmedabad is at lowest: TRA Whitepaper

Mental Wellbeing is measured as a person’s ability to cope with various worries they may encounter. It is the sum of the cognitive, behavioural, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of a person. Worries may be real or imagined, but the easiest way to explain worry is as ‘advancement of anxiety’. Coping counterbalances worry, and it is a person’s ability to deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties successfully or in an adequate manner. During a serious and continued crisis like the current lockdown, the coping ability may increase or decrease against worries depending on several personal and environmental factors.  The first edition of TRA’s whitepaper Coronavirus Consumer Insights – 1 was published on 24th April 2020. This whitepaper compares the change Mental Wellbeing of citizens from Lockdown 1.0 to Lockdown 3.0.

N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, India’s leading consumer insights and brand analytics company said, “Delhi (NCR) citizens display an ‘Outstanding’ rating in the Mental Wellbeing Index, with the citizenry’s coping skills bettering their worries. Guwahati at 89% MWBI and Hyderabad at 82% MWBI both display ‘Excellent’ Mental Wellbeing. Indore displays an unchanged MWBI score at 76% and continues to display ‘Good’ Mental Wellbeing.”

Ahmedabad displays the lowest Mental Wellbeing at 25% followed by Chennai at 28% and Kolkata, facing the dual crises of Covid-19 and Amphan is at 29% MWBI. Along with these cities, Nagpur (36%), Kochi (37%) and Coimbatore (39%) also display ‘Very Poor’ Mental Wellbeing, Chandramouli added.

Dr. Jalpa Bhuta, Consultant Psychiatrist, practicing at Global Hospital and Hinduja Khar, observed, “The study shows that cities like Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai are not coping too well as compared to most others and combined health and economic anxieties are more prominent in these cities. It is important for authorities to invest in more detailed studies of citizens’ mental wellbeing to address these issues. Mental health is as important as physical and economic wellbeing, but being a silent problem, it often gets overlooked. The need of the hour for everyone is to keep a positive attitude, high resilience and a strong spiritual faith, all of which contribute to coping ability and mental wellbeing.”

Four cities showed improved Mental Wellbeing between Lockdown 1.0 and Lockdown 3.0. Delhi (NCR) was leading and the city displays Outstanding Mental Wellbeing at 107% with Coping higher than Worry. The city also shows the highest rise in Mental Wellbeing Index (rise of 44%) from Lockdown 1.0. Lucknow showed a 27% improvement in the Mental Wellbeing Index to now display Good on the MWBI scale. Mumbai has a rise in MWBI of 26%, though still at a Poor on the MWBI metric. Hyderabad is the only other city where Mental Wellbeing Index has shown a rise of 18%, rising from Good to Excellent Mental Wellbeing. All other cities either did not show any change in the MWBI or showed a decrease in Mental Wellbeing.

The City Mental Wellbeing heatmap shows the data in a different format, clearly showing the deterioration of Mental Wellbeing in a majority of the cities with significant exceptions as stated in the above paragraph (Green indicates better MWBI, and colour changes progressively toward Red showing worse MWBI).