Abstract
This study assessed the mental health of apprentices during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria and the effect of gender, migration background, work situation, and work sector. An online survey via REDCap was performed with a sample of 1442 apprentices (female: 53.5%, male: 45.4%, diverse: 1.1%, migration background: 28.4%) from 29 March to 18 May 2021. Indicators of mental health were depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (GAD-7), well-being (WHO-5), disordered eating (EAT-8), and insomnia (ISI-7). There was a high prevalence of clinically relevant depression (cut-offs ≥11 for adolescents, ≥10 for adults: 48.3%), anxiety (cut-offs ≥11 for adolescents, ≥10 for adults: 35.4%), insomnia (cut-off ≥15: 27%), and disordered eating (cut-offs ≥2 for men, ≥3 for women: 50.6%). Linear models revealed that apprentices with female and diverse gender, migration background, and unemployed status showed the poorest scores on all mental health measures (all p-values < 0.05) except disordered eating. These findings emphasize the need for intersectional strategies to reduce and prevent adverse mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for apprentices.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated measures to prevent an uncontrolled dissemination of the disease have impacted the lives of many people all over the world in all aspects of life
Austria has a high immigration rate—28% of 15–29 year-olds have a migration background [27]—and we investigated whether mental health differed according to migration background in this young apprentice sample
On 1 April 2021, a regional lockdown was introduced in the eastern states of Austria (Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland) due to rising COVID-19 cases and a critical number of patients in intensive care units in these states
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated measures to prevent an uncontrolled dissemination of the disease have impacted the lives of many people all over the world in all aspects of life. As the cases started to rise again, further lockdown measures followed from 3 November 2020 to 8 February 2021. Such measures can negatively affect mental health [1,2], with consequences including increases in stress, depression, anxiety, and insomnia [3,4,5]. Young people seem to be especially affected by these lockdown measures [7,8], and many international studies are beginning to emphasize the negative effects measures such as social distancing and home-schooling can have on children’s and adolescents’ mental health [9,10,11,12,13,14]. A study conducted in May 2020 with 1794 Chinese adolescents reported an alarming prevalence as high as
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