‘Touch hunger’: trajectory and predictors of longing for physical contact during the COVID-19 pandemic in people with and without depressive, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorders

Little is known about ‘touch hunger’ (longing for physical contact) during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for people with pre-existing mental health disorders. We aimed to 1) explore whether touch hunger differs between people with and without depressive, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2) study the development of touch hunger in relation to loneliness, and 3) examine its predictors during lockdown. Data were aggregated from three Dutch ongoing prospective cohorts with similar methodology for data collection. We included participants with pre-pandemic data gathered during 2006–2016, and who completed up to 9 online questionnaires between October 2020 and February 2022. Touch hunger trajectories were analyzed using linear mixed models. Sociodemographics, personality traits, (chronicity of) mental health disorders, and COVID-19-related factors were analyzed as predictors of touch hunger using multivariate linear regression analyses. We included 1,061 participants with (n = 811) and without (n = 250) mental health disorders. In all chronicity groups, touch hunger increased during lockdown and decreased after lockdown. Extraversion (β = 0.256, P