After researching college students prior to COVID-19 with a survey in Year I of the pandemic, an international team of scientists found no improvement in students’ psychological well-being even after introducing vaccines and easing social distancing methods. let alone a return to campus in many cases.
In fact, in the spring of 2021, the researchers saw a significant drop in both physical and emotional health – students saw their daily steps decrease by 35% and their risk of clinical depression increased by 36%, roughly half the total Student interviewed.
From spring 2019, the scientists, including one each from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University as well as the University of California San Diego and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, combined biometric and survey data from several college student groups (1,179 in total). by spring 2021 in a study published online on December 2 in Scientific Reports.
“We were surprised when the data showed us that some of the initial lifestyle and mental health disorders that emerged in spring 2020 continued through spring 2021 while restrictions were lifted,” said Osea Giuntella, labor and health expert Health Economics and Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences.
In a paper published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers used data from before the international outbreak of the pandemic in spring 2020 to identify significant disturbances in sleep, physical activity, and social interactions and even document screen time among college students. The Scientific Reports paper examines a continuation of “Lifestyle and Mental Health Disorders a Year” in these times of COVID. While the new study adds a stronger focus on habit formation and adaptation to environmental change, it offers a data-distilled look at how this subgroup has suffered changes in physical and mental well-being that could affect policies and protocols in the short and long term -Expression.
“These long-lasting effects of the pandemic are worrying. Since lifestyle and mental health have not recovered as the pandemic subsided, it will be important to develop interventions to reduce sedentary habits and improve wellbeing, ”said Silvia Saccardo, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social and Decision-making Sciences from Dietrich College of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.
Five cohorts of University of Pittsburgh students participated in the study between spring 2019 and spring 2021: Average age 19, with 95% of respondents under 23 years old. The data was collected using portable devices that the students used for one semester. The first two “waves” came in the spring and autumn semester of 2019, before COVID-19 prevailed. The Spring 2020 cohort began in February 2020, barely a month before the pandemic sent Americans home to work or study, and lasted until April 2020 – some lasted until July 2020. The final two cohorts were the September-November 2020 fall semester and February – May 2021 spring semester. April 2021 marked the start when COVID-19 vaccinations were available in Pennsylvania, and by the end of May, 95% of students surveyed had received at least a first dose and 85% had received both doses.
Her physical activity increased and decreased, from 4,600 steps per day from March-April 2020 to 6,300 in May-July 2020 to 6,900 in September-November 2020 … and then decreased to 6,400 last spring, February-May 2021. Even so, it had not returned to pre-pandemic levels of 9,800 steps per day. The same thing happened to their active or non-sedentary time each day, which went from 4.3 hours before the pandemic to 2.9 hours at the start of the pandemic to about 3.6 hours in both last fall (2020) and spring ( 2021) semester was enough.
Screen time remained “significantly” higher than pre-pandemic levels, the researchers wrote, although the time spent on social interactions pretty much doubled to normal levels from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours in the first year.
Using the Center for Epidemiological Depression’s scale, the primary measure of mental health, the researchers found a sharp increase in symptoms of depression between spring 2020 and spring 2021. While student scores rose 50% at the start of the pandemic in 2020, they were still an overall 24% higher than before the pandemic, measured in spring 2021.
In the end, the researchers estimated that 42-56% of their participants were at risk for clinical depression by the spring of 2021.
“Our results show how important it is for universities to take precautions and find ways to improve mental and physical well-being,” said Giuntella and Saccardo.
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diary
Scientific reports
Research method
Data / statistics analysis
Research subject
persons
Article heading
Lifestyle and mental health one year after COVID-19
Publication date of the article
2-Dec-2021
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