Mental Health and Physical Activity of Female Higher Education Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study from Lithuania

Abstract

During emerging adulthood (EA), higher education medical students undergo a higher risk of anxiety and depression compared to the general population. The aim of this comparative cross-sectional study was to compare the proportions of three mental disorders, namely anxiety, depression and somatisation in terms of their symptoms and self-reported physical activity (PA) levels across the cohorts of biomedical and non-biomedical female students as well as to assess the association between the mental health outcomes and PA use. Between September 2021 and January 2022, a total of 1231 female higher education students aged between 18 and 29 years old were recruited for the study. Severe symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as unexplained somatic complaints, were suffered by 51.9%, 11% and 23% of female students, respectively. Non-biomedical female students, compared to medicine and health sciences students, were more vulnerable due to the increased prevalence of negative mental health outcomes. The relationship between increased sports activity as a potential trigger for mental well-being and decreased severity of depressive symptoms was identified in the cohorts of both biomedical (adjusted odd ratio (ORadj) 0.4; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.1–1.0) and non-biomedical (ORadj 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2–0.9) female students. The current research highlights the importance of increasing sports activity by involving students in regular physical exercise of specific types for decreasing the severity of depressive symptoms in student-aged female populations.

An investigative study of anxiety, depression and sleep quality in college students after the COVID-19 pandemic - the moderating effect of physical activity

“…The senior group was significantly higher than the junior group in terms of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, and lower than the junior group in terms of the amount of physical activity. A foreign meta-analysis showed that the prevalence of COVID-19 has a greater impact on college students, specifically in terms of anxiety, depression, and stress, especially for women as well as final-year students (Baranauskas et al, 2022). Domestic large-scale surveys in Guangdong and Hubei at the beginning of 2020 showed that the incidence of depression during the epidemic among college students was 21.2% and 37.92%, and the incidence of anxiety was 26.6% and 34.3%, respectively (Wang et al, 2023), and there were grade differences, with the detection rate of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders being much higher than that of lower-grade students in the case of higher-grade graduates who faced such important nodes as graduation defences, interviews, and job searches, and the number of sports.…”

Asociación entre los niveles de actividad física y los síntomas de depresión y ansiedad en estudiantes de Medicina Humana

“…Entre los estudiantes de Medicina se observó una tendencia que a menor nivel de actividad física, los puntajes en las escalas de síntomas de depresión y ansiedad fueron mayores; sin embargo, no se encontró una asociación estadísticamente significativa entre dichas variables, a pesar de que esta asociación ha sido reportada en otros estudios en universitarios en general (23)(24)(25)(26), y entre estudiantes de Medicina en específico (15)(16)(17). En un estudio realizado en universitarios coreanos, los síntomas de depresión fueron significativamente más altos en los grupos de actividad física de baja intensidad (24); por otro lado, en un estudio realizado el 2022 en universitarias de Lituania, se encontró menor sintomatología depresiva entre aquellas con niveles más altos de actividad física (actividad laboral, deportiva y recreativa), este hallazgo ocurrió tanto en estudiantes de carreras de ciencias de la salud como de otras disciplinas (26).…”