Abstract
BackgroundThe outbreak of Coronavirus Disease is causing considerable acute risk to public health and might also have an unanticipated impact on the mental health of children and adolescents in the long run. This study collected data during the national lockdown period in China and aims to understand whether there is a clinically significant difference in anxiety, depression, and parental rearing style when comparing adolescents from Wuhan and other cities in China. This study also intends to examine whether gender, grade in school, single child status, online learning participation, parents’ involvement in COVID-19 related work, and parents being quarantined or infected due to the disease would lead to clinically significant differences in anxiety and depression. Beyond that, this study explored the pathways among the different variables in order to better understand how these factors play a part in impacting adolescents’ mental health condition.ResultsResults showed that there was a statistically significant difference in anxiety symptoms between participants who were from Wuhan compared to other urban areas, but not in depressive symptoms. In addition, participants’ grade level, gender, relative being infected, and study online have direct positive predictive value for depressive and anxiety symptoms, whereas location and sibling status have indirect predictive value. Having relatives who participated in COVID-19 related work only had positive direct predictive value toward depression, but not anxiety.ConclusionsThis study discovered several risk factors for adolescents’ depression and anxiety during the pandemic. It also called for a greater awareness of Wuhan parents’ mental wellbeing and recommended a systematic approach for mental health prevention and intervention.
Highlights
The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease is causing considerable acute risk to public health and might have an unanticipated impact on the mental health of children and adolescents in the long run
Results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in anxiety symptoms between participants who were from Wuhan compared to other urban areas (χ2(df = 1) = 8.825, p = .004), but there was no statistically significant difference in depressive symptoms (χ2(df = 1) = 1.137, p = .286)
We did not find significant differences in depression and anxiety symptoms in those who have relatives who participate in epidemic-related work and those whose parents were quarantined due to the disease
Summary
The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease is causing considerable acute risk to public health and might have an unanticipated impact on the mental health of children and adolescents in the long run. Other interventions were implemented in China during the epidemic, such as nationwide traffic restrictions, home quarantine policies, and school lockdowns This meant a huge and sudden change of regular life—people might experience sudden separation from loved ones, some encountered shortages of living supplies, and many people faced great financial distress due to job closures and reduced wages [11]. While struggling under these special circumstances, the stringent restrictions greatly controlled the epidemic and protected people’s physical health, so that more attention shifted to the psychological field. The pre-existing “protective factors”, such as strict home quarantine which ensured a lower morbidity rate for children and adolescents, might have had an unanticipated negative impact on the mental health of children and adolescents in the long run
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