Mental health problems among Dutch adolescents of the general population before and 9 months after the COVID-19 outbreak: A longitudinal cohort study

  1. Peter G. van der Velden
  2. Hedwig J.A. van Bakel
  3. Marcel Das

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114528
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.27.21251952: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Ethical approval and informed consent: According to the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO) the present study did not require approval from a Medical Ethical Testing Committee (METC).
    IRB: Nevertheless, the longitudinal Health module (as part of the Longitudinal Core Study in LISS, starting in 2007) were evaluated and approved by the Board of Overseers, an Internal Review Board (IRB) until 2014.
    RandomizationTo enable a comparison of the incidence at T2 and T3, we therefore first randomly split the total study sample into two almost equal independent subgroups of respondents (A: n=2,025; and B: n=2,019; because of the weighting the numbers of both groups slightly differs).
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableThe 16 profiles were constructed using the variables sex (male, female), age (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65 years and older) and marital status (married and unmarried), yielding 2*4*2=16 demographic profiles.

    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:
    Strengths and limitations: Although our results showed very clear patterns, some limitations need to be discussed when interpreting and using the outcomes of this study. We did not conduct clinical interviews that would certainly have enriched our study. Although our results do not point in the direction of a strong post-COVID-19 outbreak increase of mental disorders, future studies using clinical interviews will provide further insight in this topic. We extended previous COVID-19 studies by assessing sleep problems, fatigue, use of medicines for sleep problems, anxiety and depression, disabilities due to health problems, and mental health services utilization. However, future studies focusing on other mental health problems such as eating problems, panic attacks, phobias, alcohol and drug misuse, and low self-esteem are warranted. The three surveys had a one-year time interval. Although we examined anxiety and depression symptoms in March 2019, March 2020 and June 2020 in previous studies, we cannot rule out the possibility that significant increases and decreases can be observed using shorter time intervals. The last survey in the present study was conducted in November-December 2020. How this pandemic will develop in the next year is uncertain. Monitoring of mental health of the general population is therefore needed, also because the duration of this pandemic on the longer term may undermine the capacities of individuals to cope with the consequences. It is unclear to wha...

    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 10.1101/2021.02.27.21251952v1 on medRxiv