Longitudinal study shows a link between students' mental wellness and risk perception.
COVID-19 took a crushing toll not only on our day-to-day practical functioning, but on our mental health and well-being. To Laura Brumariu, PhD, associate professor and associate dean for professional programs and student advancement in the Adelphi University Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, its psychological effects on young adults seemed particularly complex.
In a recent paper, “Mental Health Among Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Investigation” (The Journal of Psychology, February 2023),¹ Dr. Brumariu and collaborators at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași, Romania, surveyed nearly 300 students across a six-month post-lockdown period. “We were interested to see changes in mental health indicators,” Dr. Brumariu noted— specifically, whether COVID-19-related experiences “would increase or decrease the quality of students’ mental health over time.”
Between May and November 2020, the team tracked general changes in students’ positive mental health and psychological distress. They also measured pandemic-related factors, such as students’ sense of risk, knowledge of the virus and opinions on the efficacy of preventive behaviors. The results “touched on a plethora of psychological phenomena,” including young people’s perception of disease transmission, their government’s response, individual preventive measures and even their sense of the future beyond the pandemic. While participants’ knowledge of COVID-19 did not change across the six months of study, they eventually became less confident that preventive behaviors such as isolation and social distancing would protect them, matching a decline in positive mental health levels.
“Overall, we learned that an accurate perception of risk and proper levels of prevention may limit the pandemic’s adverse effects on mental health,” Dr. Brumariu said. In the future, public health strategies should draw on this knowledge to provide everyone—not just young adults—with a clear picture of the risks they face, for all our sakes.
Biography
Laura E. Brumariu, PhD
Laura E. Brumariu, PhD, is associate dean for professional programs and student advancement in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology and associate professor of psychology. Her research interests reflect a developmental psychopathology perspective and explore how and why children’s relationships with attachment figures influence their social and emotional development. She also examines best ways to assess attachment in middle childhood and developmental models of childhood anxiety and related disorders. Dr. Brumariu is the director of the Derner Child and Adolescent Research (CARE) Lab, which investigates transactional models of how developmental processes, parental behavior and parent-child relationships relate to child adjustment.
¹Măirean, C., Zancu, S. A., Diaconu-Gherasim, L. R., & Brumariu, L. E. (2023). “Mental Health Among Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Investigation.” The Journal of Psychology, 157(3), 192–211. doi:10.108 0/00223980.2023.2169230