The Covid-19 pandemic and mental health of first-year college students: Examining the effect of Covid-19 stressors using longitudinal data.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented stress to students and educational institutions across the world. We aimed to estimate the effect of the pandemic on the mental health of college students.

Methods

We used data on 419 first-year students (ages 18-20) at a large public university in North Carolina both before (October 2019-February 2020) and after (June/July 2020) the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. After evaluating descriptive data on mental health and stressors by students' demographic characteristics, we estimated the associations between Covid-19 stressors (including work reductions, health, distanced learning difficulties and social isolation) and mental health symptoms and severity controlling for students' pre-pandemic mental health, psychosocial

SUBMITTER: Fruehwirth JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7935268 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature