Pandemic and student mental health: mental health symptoms among university students and young adults after the first cycle of lockdown in the UK

Abstract

Background: Early COVID-19 research suggests a detrimental impact of the initial lockdown on young people's mental health.

Aims: We investigated mental health among university students and young adults after the first UK lockdown and changes in symptoms over 6 months.

Method: In total, 895 university students and 547 young adults not in higher education completed an online survey at T1 (July-September 2020). A subset of 201 university students also completed a 6 month follow-up survey at T2 (January-March 2021). Anxiety, depression, insomnia, substance misuse and suicide risk were assessed.

Results: At T1, approximately 40%, 25% and 33% of the participants reported moderate to severe anxiety and depression and substance misuse risk, clinically significant insomnia and suicidal risk. In participants reassessed at T2, reductions were observed in anxiety and depression but not in insomnia, substance misuse or suicidality. Student and non-student participants reported similar levels of mental health symptoms. Student status was not a significant marker of mental health symptoms, except for lower substance misuse risk.Cross-sectionally, greater symptoms across measures were consistently associated with younger age, pre-existing mental health conditions, being a carer, worse financial status, increased sleep irregularity and difficulty since lockdown. Longitudinally, T2 symptoms were consistently associated with worse financial status and increased difficulty sleeping at T1. However, these associations were attenuated when baseline mental health symptoms were adjusted for in the models.

Conclusions: Mental health symptoms were prevalent in a large proportion of young people after the first UK lockdown. Risk factors identified may help characterise high-risk groups for enhanced support and inform interventions.

Keywords: COVID-19; University students; mental health; well-being; young adults.

Fig. 1

Timeline of COVID-19 and the Warwick RECOVERS study. Timeline of main events in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic (lockdowns (LD) 1, 2 and 3), university conditions and time points of RECOVERS data collection. Mitigating circumstances and the safety net policy were university policies put in place to prevent students from being disadvantaged by the alternative teaching and assessment practices that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, an automatic 2 week deadline extension for assessments in progress (initiated before 13 March 2020) was introduced, and examination boards could be informed of how personal circumstances may have affected the production of research projects and take these circumstances into account when grading work.

Fig. 2

Changes in behaviours and circumstances since the lockdown at T1. The positive y-axis represents the percentage increase/improved and the negative y-axis represents percentage decrease/worsened. For sleeping earlier, the negative y-axis represents the percentage of participants who reported sleeping later. For sleep more irregular, the negative y-axis represents the percentage of participants who reported that their sleep pattern stayed the same. For difficulty sleeping, the negative y-axis represents the percentage of participants who reported not having difficulty sleeping. Only unweighted percentages are presented for easy interpretation, as weighted percentages were almost identical and the pattern of differences revealed by chi-squared (χ²) tests are the same. Only one χ² was conducted for sleeping earlier and sleep more irregular as these were extracted from the same question, with four response options on changes in sleeping patterns (‘going to sleep at an earlier time than is usual for you’, ‘going to sleep at a later time than is usual for you’, ‘lost its regularity’ and ‘stayed about the same’). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001.

Fig. 3

New/positive activities engagement since the lockdown at T1. Graph reporting the percentage of participants, by group, who engaged in the featured new/positive activities since the first lockdown. Only unweighted percentages are presented for easy interpretation, as weighted percentages were almost identical and the pattern of differences revealed by chi-squared tests were the same. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001.