The consequences of a year of the COVID-19 pandemic for the mental health of young adult twins in England and Wales.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, not only through the infection itself but also through the measures taken to control the spread of the virus (e.g. lockdown).

Aims

Here, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented lockdown affected the mental health of young adults in England and Wales.

Method

We compared the mental health symptoms of up to 4773 twins in their mid-20s in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) and during four-wave longitudinal data collection during the pandemic in April, July and October 2020, and in March 2021 (T2-T5) using phenotypic and genetic longitudinal designs.

Results

The average changes in mental health were small to medium and mainly occurred from T1 to T2 (average Cohen d = 0.14). Despit

SUBMITTER: Rimfeld K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9304950 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature