Abstract
Aims: There is an urgent need to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health and health behaviours. To date, there are no such studies on Swedish adolescents. As COVID-19 emerged in the middle of our ongoing 2-year follow-up examination of the Study of Adolescence Resilience and Stress, we had the unique opportunity to use the corona outbreak as a ‘natural experiment’ to study the impact of COVID-19 on 15-year-old adolescents in Sweden. Methods: Adolescents (baseline age 13.6±0.4 years) were recruited from schools in western Sweden (during the COVID-19 outbreak schools were kept open for those under 16 years of age). The COVID-19 pandemic reached Sweden on 31 January 2020. A total of 1316 adolescents answered the 2-year follow-up survey before (unexposed to COVID-19 pandemic, controls) and 584 after 1 February 2020 (COVID19-exposed). Data on stress, psychosomatic symptoms, happiness, relationships with parents and peers, school and health behaviours were collected. Results: Adolescents reported higher levels of stress and psychosomatic symptoms and lower levels of happiness at follow-up compared to baseline. These changes occurred to a similar extent in both the control and COVID-19-exposed groups. Likewise, the COVID-19-exposed group showed no deterioration in peer relations or relations with parents versus controls. We did not find any significant differences between groups regarding sleep duration and physical activity. Conclusions: Swedish adolescents exposed to COVID-19 during most of 2020 showed no differences in longitudinal changes in mental health, relationships with parents and peers, and health behaviours compared to those not exposed to COVID-19.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic imposes a massive change to the psychosocial environment in affected countries
The percentage of adolescents with migrant background was lower in the COVID-19-exposed than the control group (14.6% vs. 22.5%, P
The level of psychosomatic symptoms increased over the 2-year period in the control but not in the COVID-19-exposed group (Table I)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic imposes a massive change to the psychosocial environment in affected countries. There is an urgent need to explore the effects of this pandemic on the mental health in adolescents [1, 2]. Data regarding the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on adolescents are evolving [3]. There are studies reporting a high prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms, increased loneliness, perceived changes in relationships with family and friends [4,5,6,7]. Impacts of COVID-19 on children and adolescents’ health behaviour have been reported, such that children and youth have had decreased physical activity levels, increased sedentary behaviour and increased sleep during the outbreak [8,9,10].
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