The COVID-19 pandemic and its social and economic consequences have had adverse impacts on physical and mental health worldwide and exposed all segments of the population to protracted uncertainty and daily disruptions. The CoRonavIruS health and Impact Survey (CRISIS) was developed for use as an easy to implement and robust questionnaire covering key domains relevant to mental distress and resilience during the pandemic. Ongoing studies using CRISIS include international studies of COVID-related ill health conducted during different phases of the pandemic and follow-up studies of cohorts characterized before the COVID pandemic. In the current work, we demonstrate the feasibility, psychometric structure, and construct validity of this survey. We then show that pre-existing mood states, perceived COVID risk, and lifestyle changes are strongly associated with negative mood states during the pandemic in population samples of adults and in parents reporting on their children in the US and UK. These findings are highly reproducible and we find a high degree of consistency in the power of these factors to predict mental health during the pandemic.