The consequences of a year of the COVID-19 pandemic for the mental health of young adult twins in England and Wales

  1. Kaili Rimfeld
  2. Margherita Malanchini
  3. Ryan Arathimos
  4. Agnieszka Gidziela
  5. Oliver Pain
  6. Andrew McMillan
  7. Rachel Ogden
  8. Louise Webster
  9. Amy E. Packer
  10. Nicholas G. Shakeshaft
  11. Kerry L. Schofield
  12. Jean-Baptiste Pingault
  13. Andrea G. Allegrini
  14. Argyris Stringaris
  15. Sophie von Stumm
  16. Cathryn M. Lewis
  17. Robert Plomin

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, not only through the infection itself but also through the measures taken to control the spread of the virus (e.g. lockdown).

Aims

Here, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented lockdown affected the mental health of young adults in England and Wales.

Method

We compared the mental health symptoms of up to 4773 twins in their mid-20s in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) and during four-wave longitudinal data collection during the pandemic in April, July and October 2020, and in March 2021 (T2–T5) using phenotypic and genetic longitudinal designs.

Results

The average changes in mental health were small to medium and mainly occurred from T1 to T2 (average Cohen d = 0.14). Despite the expectation of catastrophic effects of the pandemic on mental health, we did not observe trends in worsening mental health during the pandemic (T3–T5). Young people with pre-existing mental health problems were disproportionately affected at the beginning of the pandemic, but their increased problems largely subsided as the pandemic persisted. Twin analyses indicated that the aetiology of individual differences in mental health symptoms did not change during the lockdown (average heritability 33%); the average genetic correlation between T1 and T2–T5 was 0.95, indicating that genetic effects before the pandemic were substantially correlated with genetic effects up to a year later.

Conclusions

We conclude that on average the mental health of young adults in England and Wales has been remarkably resilient to the effects of the pandemic and associated lockdown.

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  1. Version published to 10.1192/bjo.2022.506
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.07.21264655: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    The following GWAS summary statistics were used to create GPS: Schizophrenia38, Bipolar disorder39, Depression40, Anxiety41, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)42, ASD (autism spectrum disorder)43, EA3 (educational attainment)44, Risk taking Sensitivity45, Cross-disorder (combining eight psychiatric disorders)46, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)47, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)48, Neuroticism49 and Insomnia50.
    Neuroticism49
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were completed using SPSS Statistics software52 and R version 4.053.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.10.07.21264655 on medRxiv