Students are at elevated risk for mental health problems; despite increasing rates of infections & COVID-19 deaths, they had slight decreases of mental health problems & and loneliness

Fried, Eiko I. 2020. “Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.” PsyArXiv. April 24. doi:10.31234/osf.io/36xkp

Abstract: Students are at elevated risk for mental health problems. The COVID-19 pandemic and public health responses such as school and university closures caused once-in-a-lifetime disruptions of daily life for most students. In March 2020, during the beginning of the outbreak in the Netherlands, we used Ecological Momentary Assessment to follow 80 bachelor students 4 times a day for 2 weeks. Despite rapidly increasing rates of infections and deaths, short-term dynamics revealed slight decreases of mental health problems, COVID-19 related concerns, and loneliness, especially in the first few days of the study. Students showed no changes in the frequency of in-person social activities. Dynamic network models indicated that social activities were negatively related to being at home, and identified reinforcing vicious cycles among mental health problems and being alone, which in turn predicted concerns about COVID-19. Findings and implications are discussed in detail.