Depressing Temporal Experiences: The COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown in Victoria, Australia

Various governments around the world implemented stay-at-home orders, colloquially known as lockdowns, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research suggests that these lockdowns had significant impacts upon the lived experiences of temporality of many people, with widespread reports of anomalous experiences of temporal passage and difficulties with judgements of temporal duration.

We conducted a phenomenologically framed online survey of 830 people in the state of Victoria, Australia, focused on temporal experiences of the state's COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. This survey used an adjusted version of the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience (TATE) scale to get clearer about the frequency of the temporal anomalies and disruptions of these lockdowns.

Our survey results confirm much of the existing research regarding the widespread prevalence of anomalous temporal experiences. In particular, we found that around half of our participants reported slowness, feeling out of sync (with others and the world), and persistent worry about the future during the lockdowns, with these reported disruptions falling sharply after restrictions ended in late 2021.

By juxtaposing these survey results with existing work in the phenomenology of depression, we contend that many people experienced depressive-like temporal experiences under lockdown. We also outline the need for further phenomenologically informed research of this kind, which conjoins both qualitative and quantitative methods.