Health Soc Care Community. 2022;00:1–10. | 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hsc 1 | INTRODUCTION COVID-19 disrupted lives and caused death and distress in unprec- edented ways (Ghebreyesus, 2020). At the time of writing, over 13 million cases of COVID-19 and over 149,000 deaths were reported in the United Kingdom (gov.uk, December 2021). In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the British government introduced a na- tional lockdown on the 23rd March 2020, which involved closing schools and non-essential high street businesses, ordering people to stay at home and banning social gatherings (Brown & Kirk-Wade, 2021). Two additional national lockdowns and a series of country wide restrictions on movement and socialisation were subsequently imposed in England. Of those, the first lockdown remains the most restrictive one (Brown & Kirk-Wade, 2021). Evidence suggests that the experience and impact of the first national lockdown has not been uniform. Initial data collected by Received: 9 March 2021 | Revised: 13 January 2022 | Accepted: 14 February 2022 DOI: 10.1111/hsc.13772 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Living through lockdown: A qualitative exploration of individuals’ experiences in the UK Cheryl Taylor 1 | Caroline Lafarge 1 | Sharon Cahill 1 | Raffaella Milani 1 | Anke Görzig 1,2 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2022 The Authors. Health and Social Care in the Community published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1 University of West London, London, UK 2 Psychology and Counselling, School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London, UK Correspondence Caroline Lafarge, School of Human and Social Sciences, University of West London, Paragon House, Boston Manor Road, Brentford TW8 9GA, UK. Email: caroline.lafarge@uwl.ac.uk Funding sources No external funding sources were used for this study. Abstract In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the British government introduced a lockdown resulting in country wide restrictions on movement and socialisation. This research sought to explore individuals’ experience of the first lockdown in the UK. A qualita- tive online survey was conducted between April and June 2020. Using a convenience sample, 29 individuals participated in the study. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Four themes were identified: ‘health and well-being’, ‘social connected- ness and belonging’, ‘employment and finances’ and ‘personal and collective values’. Participants’ experiences involved both challenges and opportunities. Participants reported challenges to their physical health, mental health, sense of connection to others as well as their employment and finances. However, they also viewed the lock- down as an opportunity to reassess their goals and values, and define a ‘new normal’ for society. Lockdown restrictions threatened individuals’ well-being on many aspects of their lives. As anxiety, loneliness and a compromised grieving process may lead to severe mental health issues, early interventions are needed to prevent these and pro- mote well-being. Interventions may include traditional therapies (e.g. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), or focus specifically on developing social networks and social support (e.g. mutual help groups). These interventions may also be conducive to the experience of growth reported by some participants. KEYWORDS anxiety, COVID-19, lockdown, loneliness, psychosocial experiences, qualitative research, thematic analysis