Fear of COVID-19 Tops Japanese Anxiety Survey

In a June 2020 opinion survey on anxiety among Japanese people, over 70% of respondents said that they had felt a degree of anxiety about something recently. In particular, 80% of women in their twenties and thirties indicated that they experienced anxiety, the highest figure of any demographic. The lowest ranked were women in their fifties and aged 60 and over, at 64%.

The impact of COVID-19 on society and the economy was apparent as the issue of most concern in this year’s survey was the “spread of infectious disease” (61.7%). It ranked slightly above “livelihood and pension in old age” (61.1%), which was the issue causing most anxiety for the first eight years after security firm Secom began the annual survey in 2012.

People taking measures to resolve anxiety increased from last year to 42%, with their main motivation being the worldwide spread of infectious disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmingly topped the list of anxiety-causing incidents and accidents in the past year, at 63.2%. The initial outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, only made headlines in January 2020, and cases in Japan began to increase dramatically from mid-March.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo: © Patakuso)