This is how News Letter readers say the lockdown has affected their lives - and their biggest concerns

Our lockdown survey, published across this title and 150 others across the UK last week, offers an insight into how the coronavirus crisis and lockdown has impacted people in Northern Ireland and their concerns for the future.

In total we asked readers 25 questions on their attitude towards the lockdown.

Of these questions three focused on how the lockdown has affected mental health, relationships and concerns for the future - and today we can reveal how people across Northern Ireland answered.

The majority of News Letter readers who completed our survey said they felt personally most concerned about the ‘health and wellbeing of family / friends’.

By comparison, on a national level, 53% answered that they were most concerned about the ‘health and wellbeing of family/ friends’, 17% said their ‘own health and wellbeing’, 8.6% ‘security of employment/ work’, 8.5% ‘impact on your children’s education’ and 6.7% ‘your own/ household finances’.

Of those who took part in the survey, the majority of News Letter readers (40%) said they had suffered ‘slight’ mental health effects due to lockdown.

Nationally, 40% answered that their mental health was ‘slightly affected’, 12% ‘severely affected’, 23% ‘not much affected’ and 22% ‘not at all affected’.

When asked about the effects the lockdown has had on their relationship with a live-in partner or spouse, the majority of News Letter readers who took part in the survey responded ‘it has not changed the relationship’.

The national average of answers on this subject was: 43% ‘it has not changed the relationship’, 12% ‘it has brought us slightly closer together’, 10.5% ‘it has brought us much closer together, 4.9% ‘it has pulled us apart slightly’, 1.6% ‘it has pulled us apart a lot’ while 25.7% answered that they do not live with a partner or spouse.

During the course of this week we will be publishing more results of what local people had to say in our lockdown survey.

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Alistair Bushe

Editor