The impact of COVID-19 on the lives and mental health of Australian adolescents
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Abstract
There has been significant disruption to the lives and mental health of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to assess the psychological and lifestyle impact of the pandemic on Australian adolescents, using an online survey, administered during the outbreak. Self-report surveys were administered online to a sample of 760 Australian adolescents aged 12–18 years assessing impact on a range of domains including behaviour, education, relationships, lifestyle factors (exercise, technology use, and sleep), and mental health outcomes (psychological distress, loneliness, health anxiety and well-being). Results showed that three quarters of the sample experienced a worsening in mental health, since the pandemic began, with negative impacts reported on learning, friendships and family relationships. There were also high higher levels of sleep disturbance, psychological distress and health anxiety, relative to normative samples. Effects on mental health were worse among those who reported a previous diagnosis of depression and/or anxiety relative to those without no such history. Adolescents are already vulnerable to the onset of mental illness at this developmental stage, and the current research underscores the need to find rapid and accessible ways to support adolescent mental health during times of crisis.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.07.20190124: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics approval and consent: The study was approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee (HC200334).
Consent: All respondents were required to pass a Gillick Competency Task to ensure the understood the study, and had the capacity to provide informed consent, before providing consent23.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected …SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.07.20190124: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics approval and consent: The study was approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee (HC200334).
Consent: All respondents were required to pass a Gillick Competency Task to ensure the understood the study, and had the capacity to provide informed consent, before providing consent23.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:With these limitations in mind, our data nonetheless suggest that there are significantly elevated rates of psychological distress45, providing insight into the acute effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health. Over one third (34%) of participants had a self-reported history of depression or anxiety, which is comparable to lifetime prevalence estimates for adolescents46. Consistent with the adult literature5,6, our results showed that relative to those without a history of depression or anxiety, those with a history experienced heightened levels of loneliness, greater trouble sleeping, more uncertainty about the future, higher levels of health anxiety, greater psychological distress and lower levels of wellbeing among those who had a previously diagnosed mental illness. These finding advance knowledge of youth mental health by showing an exacerbation of mental illness among those with a history of anxiety and/or depression. The findings reported in this study underscore the need for a proactive mental health response to support young people through this tumultuous and disruptive time in their lives. High levels of psychological distress reported in this study are consistent with increased demands on youth mental health services e.g.,18. Readily accessible interventions are needed for young people that are engaging and effective, with a focus on treatment, and prevention. Digital mental health interventions, and blended modalities with combine digital with cl...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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