College transition Fall 2020 and 2021: Understanding the relationship of COVID-19 experiences and psychosocial correlates with anxiety and depression

Rates of mental health symptoms, particularly anxiety and depression, have increased significantly in college students in the past decade along with utilization of mental health resources. The COVID-19 pandemic created an additional source of stressors to an already challenging landscape of college...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2023-07, Vol.18 (7), p.e0287792-e0287792
Main Authors: Lourie, Andrea, Kennedy, Susan, Henshaw, Erin J, James, Drexler
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Anxiety - epidemiology
Anxiety Disorders
Biology and Life Sciences
Care and treatment
College campuses
College students
Colleges & universities
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Depression - epidemiology
Humans
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental depression
Mental health
Pandemics
Psychological aspects
Social networks
Social Sciences
Students
Vaccines
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Summary:Rates of mental health symptoms, particularly anxiety and depression, have increased significantly in college students in the past decade along with utilization of mental health resources. The COVID-19 pandemic created an additional source of stressors to an already challenging landscape of college transition. COVID-19 has been associated with an increase of anxiety among college students, particularly first year students, entering college in Fall 2020. The shifts in policy (e.g., federal, state, and college) accruing medical data, and vaccine availability between Fall 2020 and Fall 2021 provide an opportunity to examine the role of COVID-19 experiences in the transition to college for these two first-year student cohorts. This study examined two cohorts of first-year students, Fall 2020 and 2021, to better understand the relationship between COVID-19 experiences, psychosocial correlates, and mental health symptoms. Results suggest that for students in our Fall 2020 cohort COVID-19 experiences played a distinct role in the prediction of mental health symptoms while in Fall 2021 COVID-19 experiences did not uniquely contribute to prediction of mental health symptoms. These findings have implications for mental health interventions for first-year students transitioning to college.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0287792