Impact of housing conditions on changes in youth’s mental health following the initial national COVID-19 lockdown: a cohort study

  1. Jonathan Groot
  2. Amélie Keller
  3. Andrea Joensen
  4. Tri-Long Nguyen
  5. Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen
  6. Katrine Strandberg-Larsen

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Abstract

We aimed to investigate if declines in youth’s mental health during lockdown were dependent on housing condition among 7445 youth (median age ~ 20 years) from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), with data collected at 18 years of age and again three weeks into the first national lockdown (April 2020). We examined associations between housing conditions (access to outdoor spaces, urbanicity, household density, and household composition) and changes in mental health (mental well-being, Quality of Life (QoL) and loneliness). We report results from multivariate linear and logistic regression models. Youth without access to outdoor spaces experienced greater declines in mental well-being (vs. garden; mean difference: − 0·75 (95% CI − 1·14, − 0·36)), and correspondingly greater odds of onset of low mental well-being (vs. garden; OR: 1·72 (95% CI 1·20, 2·48)). Youth in higher density households vs. below median or living alone vs. with parents only also had greater odds of onset of low mental well-being (OR: 1·26 (95% CI 1·08, 1·46) and OR: 1·62 (95% CI 1·17, 2·23), respectively). Living in denser households (vs. below median; OR: 1·18 (95% CI 1·06, 1·33), as well as living alone (vs. with parents; OR: 1·38 (95% CI 1·04, 1·82) was associated with onset of low QoL. Living alone more than doubled odds of onset of loneliness compared to living with parents, OR: 2·12 (95% CI 1·59, 2·82). Youth living alone, in denser households, and without direct access to outdoor spaces may be especially vulnerable to mental health declines.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-022-04909-5
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.16.20245191: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablePopulation: The Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) consists of mothers and offspring from approximately 100 000 pregnancies enrolled in the cohort during the years 1996 to 2002.13 The pregnant women responded to computer assisted telephone interviews twice during pregnancy and twice in the child’s two first years of life.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analyses: Statistical analyses were performed in Stata 15.0 (StataCorp
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    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:
    Strengths and limitations: One of the main strengths of our study design is the longitudinal design with individual-level data on a large sample of youth with measures from before and during the most restrictive phases of the Danish lockdown in spring 2020. The early lockdown of Denmark effectively curbed the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to COVID-19 were low compared to other European countries at the time of our follow-up.2 Therefore, it is less likely that changes in mental health outcomes are due to the pandemic, as opposed to the lockdown. To our knowledge, no other studies have considered longitudinally the effect of housing conditions on youth’s mental health development before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Interpretation of our results deserves consideration of a few limitations. The baseline data were collected at age 18 years and three months for all participants, whereas the participants’ ages varied during the lockdown. Thus, the time elapsed between baseline and follow-up was greater for older participants. All analyses were adjusted for age, and we thereby indirectly accounted for different time between baseline and follow up. For older participants, changes in mental health parameters may be underestimated, since their baseline measures represent a younger age than the follow-up measures, and on average reporting on mental health instruments improves by age. Therefore, our estimates could be underestimated, and thereby conservative, in par...

    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.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.16.20245191v1 on medRxiv