Longitudinal prediction of primary school children’s COVID-related future anxiety in the second year of the pandemic in Germany

Abstract

Although research has confirmed that the first COVID-19-related lockdown has increased stress and mental health problems in children, less is known about the longer-term effects of the pandemic on children’s COVID-related future anxiety (CRFA). Because of CRFA’s potentially debilitating effects, risk and resilience factors against this anxiety were investigated. To this end, n = 140 children (49% female) in 3rd and 4th grade classrooms in Germany were asked to perform a working memory task and to self-report about their CRFA and emotion regulation in December 2020 and in May 2021. More maladaptive emotion regulation in December 2020 contributed to the explanation of a high CRFA score in May 2021, whereas a better performance on working memory updating contributed a lower CRFA score later when controls were in place. These results were confirmed when children’s CRFA in December 2020 was included in the prediction of their later CRFA. They suggest that maladaptive strategies of emotion regulation, such as rumination, may explain higher or increasing levels of CRFA, whereas efficient working memory updating may be an indicator of processing information in a way which shields children from CRFA-related thoughts. The concepts underlying these variables should be included in prevention and intervention efforts.

The Effect of the COVID Pandemic on Clinical Psychology Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…In the years examined prior to the COVID pandemic (2015 and 2018), there were nearly twice as many research articles published that examined mental health in women than in men. Although the COVID pandemic exacerbated many pre-existing disparities in other areas of society (e.g., [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 33 ]), the values in Table 1 show that the number of published research articles that examined mental health in women and men remained at an approximately two-fold difference in the years examined after the start of the COVID pandemic (2020 and 2022).…”

“…After people had experienced the virus for some time and felt the influence of it in other parts of their lives [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], the ego network for COVID-19 in 2022 shows that COVID-related research expanded beyond anxiety , depression , and stress to include some of the more fundamental topics of Clinical Psychology for both men and women, such as eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder , and to fundamental topics found only for research in men (e.g., gay and bisexual men ) and to fundamental topics found only for research in women (e.g., pregnancy ). Further, the ego network for COVID-19 in 2022 ( Figure 6 ) shows a number of research topics that may have been exacerbated by the quarantines and lockdowns experienced in many countries around the world during the pandemic (e.g., alcohol use , substance use , intimate partner violence , loneliness , and physical activity ).…”

“…The WHO declared an end to the Public Health Emergency in May 2023 [ 2 ]. In addition to the hundreds of millions of cases of and millions of deaths from COVID-19 world-wide [ 3 ], the disease and measures to contain its spread had widespread effects on social, political, economic (e.g., labor markets and supply chains), and educational institutions in countries around the world [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. The disease and measures to contain its spread also affected various psychological and physical behaviors (e.g., eating, sleeping, and exercise) of individuals around the world [ 13 , 14 ].…”