Post-Lockdown Effects on Students’ Mental Health in Romania: Perceived Stress, Missing Daily Social Interactions, and Boredom Proneness

Abstract

The rapid spread of COVID-19 worldwide was accompanied by intense fears, confusion, worries, anger, and stress threatening people’s mental health. Unprecedented measures to slow down and prevent the transmission of COVID-19 have had various impacts on the population’s health behaviour and mental health. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the lockdown’s effects on university students’ mental health in Romania. Based on a cross-sectional design, the survey data were collected from a sample of 722 participants (247 males; M = 21.1 years; SD ± 1.73). A path analysis was performed to verify the hypothesised direct and indirect effects included in the multiple mediation model. The findings showed a positive association between stress and boredom proneness, missing daily social interactions, spending more time on phone conversations, and the increasing interest in following news about the pandemic. The path analysis revealed an excellent fit between the proposed multiple mediation model and the sample data. Boredom proneness and missing daily social interactions both affected stress, directly and indirectly, through more time spent on phone conversations. In addition, it was found that the increased interest in following news about the pandemic mediated the relationship between boredom proneness and perceived stress. In terms of gender differences, our findings revealed that female students experienced significantly higher stress levels than male students, perceived to a greater extent the lack of daily social interactions, and spent more time on phone conversations. Overall, the findings further extend the empirical evidence on university students’ mental health in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, universities need to organise support programmes focused on developing university students’ coping strategies to maintain their mental health even in adverse contexts.

COVID-19 pandemic's impact on French Health Students: A cross-sectional study during the third wave

“…In agreement with the literature, women ( Dumitrache et al, 2021 ) and younger students ( Shanahan et al, 2020 ) have an increased risk of psychological distress. Financial difficulties are the major risk factor for psychological distress in our study (OR = 4.58 for important difficulties), consistent with previous data ( Rajapuram et al, 2020 ).…”

Effect of Housing Quality on the Mental Health of University Students during the COVID-19 Lockdown

“…For depressive-related symptomatology, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) scale was adopted [19], assessing the severity of depressive symptoms during the previous two weeks. Among a range score from 0 to 27, the severity could be assessed as normal (0-4), ( 2) mild (5-9), ( 3) moderate (10)(11)(12)(13)(14), (4) moderate/severe (15)(16)(17)(18)(19), and severe (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27).…”

“…COVID-19 significantly contributed to changed working habits too, with an increased adoption of working solutions that transformed home environments into work environments. In the scientific literature, several studies have highlighted the impact of COVID-19 and the lockdowns on the mental health and depression of students, one of the most fragile demographics of the population [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Nevertheless, the role of the housing environment where most of them spent their daily hours was rarely considered [ 23 ].…”

Cyberbullying during the pandemic: an exploratory study about Romanian university students

“…This is important to our research, as previous studies showed that social media use and cyber engagement amplifies cyberbullying, cyber harassment and cyber stalking (Al-Rahmi et al, 2018). The time spend online has increased following the 2020 lockdown (Dumitrache et al, 2021), and as the pandemic pushed classes online, as did the communication between the students and their professors and colleagues. This increase in online communication made students more vulnerable to cyberbullying.…”