A longitudinal study of mental health in adolescents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Objective Although cross-sectional studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has negativelyaffected the mental health of adolescents, the effect of the pandemic on adolescents with pre-pandemicsymptoms is unclear. We therefore tested the hypothesis that adolescents had increased emotional andbehavioral problems during the lockdowns imposed during the pandemic.Method This study included three measurements in a prospective cohort of 1022 adolescentswho were oversampled based on their high risk of developing psychopathology. Before the pandemic, weassessed depressive, anxiety, stress, oppositional defiant problems, psychotic experiences and suicidality,using the Youth Self-Report; 445 and 333 of these 1022 adolescents subsequently completed the onlinequestionnaire in the first lockdown (in April 2020) and in the second lockdown (in January 2021),respectively. Multilevel random intercept regression models were used to determine the change inpsychiatric symptoms, including an interaction term to assess whether these changes differed based onthe severity of symptoms prior to the pandemic.Results Throughout the pandemic, the majority of adolescents reported having emotional and behavioralsymptoms that were within the normal range. Moreover, the mean symptom scores for all six outcomesdecreased significantly among adolescents with high clinical severity prior to the pandemic.Conclusion In contrast to our original hypothesis, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may notnecessarily be detrimental, at least among a specific subgroup of adolescents with preexisting mentalhealth problems. Moreover, our finding that most adolescents did not report experiencing clinicallyrelevant symptoms during the pandemic reflects their resilience during the pandemic.

An Explainable Machine Learning Approach for COVID-19’s Impact on Mood States of Children and Adolescents during the First Lockdown in Greece

“…Overall, we can conclude that the positive changes to a child’s life due to the first lockdown—the relationships among the family members, the time spent watching TV, and parental evaluation of the child’s mental health and the stress caused by COVID-19 restrictions—could play crucial role to the change in the mood state of the child. These results are aligned with the results of relevant studies found on the literature that incorporated pre-pandemic clinical samples or population-based cohorts of children at high risk for transition from subclinical to clinically significant levels of psychopathology [ 72 , 73 , 74 ]. Moreover, the finding that that most of the children and youths managed to maintain stable mood (63.04%: 469 out of 744) or even have positive mood change (14.25%: 106 out of 744) may be related to the concept of resilience.…”

An Explainable Machine Learning Approach for COVID-19 Impact on Mood State of Children and Adolescents during the 1st Lockdown in Greece

“…Overall, we can conclude that the positive changes to child's life due to the 1 st lockdown, the relationships among the family members, the time spent on TV and parental evaluation of the child's mental health and the stress caused by COVID-19 restrictions could play crucial role to the change of the mood state of the child. These results are aligned with the results of relevant studies found on the literature that incorporated pre-pandemic clinical samples or population-based cohorts of children at high risk for transition from subclinical to clinically significant levels of psychopathology [61][62][63]. Moreover, the finding that that most of the children and youths managed to maintain stable mood (63.04%: 469 out of 744) or even have positive mood change (14.25%: 106 out of 744) may be related to the concept of resilience.…”

Examining socioeconomic disparities in changes in adolescent mental health before and during different phases of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic

“…As far as we know, only one study compared adolescent mental health pre-COVID-19 with various COVID-19 phases. This prospective study was conducted among adolescents with a high risk of developing psychopathology in the Netherlands (Bouter et al, 2021)…”

“…As far as we know, only one study compared adolescent mental health pre‐COVID‐19 with various COVID‐19 phases. This prospective study was conducted among adolescents with a high risk of developing psychopathology in the Netherlands (Bouter et al., 2021 ). Results revealed increases in depressive symptoms when comparing scores before COVID‐19 with scores during the initial COVID‐19 phase (April 2020), but also when comparing the initial COVID‐19 phase with the prevailing COVID‐19 phase (January 2021).…”