The global crisis prevailing in the wake of the spread of COVID-19 has raised several speculations about the impact of the lockdown on the mental health of people. The dataset presented here is the assessment of the psychological distress experienced by people in India following the implementation of lockdown as a measure to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. The data was collected through a survey conducted by employing an online questionnaire assessing the socio-demographic information (9-items) as well as the administration of the short version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12 items) originally developed by Goldberg (1972). The period of data collection is between 9th April 2020 and 20th April 2020 where a total of 1,894 responses were obtained. The Google forms containing the questionnaire of the study were shared publicly through emails and via the social media forum like WhatsApp and Facebook. Thereby, those who took the initiative to fill-up the responses were included as the survey participants. Thus, the final sample had participants representing 17 states and Union territories of India. The entire dataset is stored in a Microsoft Excel Worksheet (.xls) and the questionnaire is attached as a supplementary file. The data is beneficial for the timely assessment of the nature and degree of the psychological distress experienced by people in India during the COVID-19 crisis. It could further be an assistance to the Government, policymakers as well as health care workers to take the adequate measures to ensure sound mental health among people.
Psychological health problems during the lockdown: A survey of Indian population in COVID-19 pandemic