Stress-Related Growth in Adolescents Returning to School After COVID-19 School Closure.

Lea Waters,Kelly-Ann Allen,Gökmen Arslan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643443

Abstract

The move to remote learning during COVID-19 has impacted billions of students. While research shows that school closure, and the pandemic more generally, has led to student distress, the possibility that these disruptions can also prompt growth in is a worthwhile question to investigate. The current study examined stress-related growth (SRG) in a sample of students returning to campus after a period of COVID-19 remote learning (n = 404, age = 13–18). The degree to which well-being skills were taught at school (i.e., positive education) before the COVID-19 outbreak and student levels of SRG upon returning to campus was tested via structural equation modeling. Positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use in students were examined as mediators. The model provided a good fit [χ2 = 5.37, df = 3, p = 0.146, RMSEA = 0.044 (90% CI = 0.00–0.10), SRMR = 0.012, CFI = 99, TLI = 0.99] with 56% of the variance in SRG explained. Positive education explained 15% of the variance in cognitive reappraisal, 7% in emotional processing, and 16% in student strengths use during remote learning. The results are discussed using a positive education paradigm with implications for teaching well-being skills at school to foster growth through adversity and assist in times of crisis.

Highlights

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread rapidly across the globe in 2020, infecting more than 70 million people and causing more than 1.5 million deaths at the time of submitting this paper (December 8, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a)
Stress-Related Growth Using an abbreviated Stress-Related Growth Scale (Vaughn et al, 2009), students were asked to think about whether their experience with COVID-19 changed them in any specific ways, including internal growth (“I have learned to deal better with uncertainty,” “I learned not to let small hassles bother me the way they used to,” etc.) and social growth (“I reached out and helped others,” “I have learned to appreciate the strength of others who have had a difficult life,” etc.)
In this time of global crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, studies investigating how young people can come out stronger is vitally important given the findings from earlier pandemics that psychopathology and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can last for up to 3 years post the pandemic (Sprang and Silman, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread rapidly across the globe in 2020, infecting more than 70 million people and causing more than 1.5 million deaths at the time of submitting this paper (December 8, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a). A review assessing the mental health impact of COVID-19 on 6–21-year-olds (n = 51 articles) found levels of Stress-Related Growth in COVID-19 depression and anxiety ranging between 11.78 and 47.85% across China, the United States of America, Europe, and South America (Marques de Miranda et al, 2020). Researchers have identified moderate levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in youth samples during the COVID-19 pandemic (Guo et al, 2020; Liang et al, 2020; Wang et al, 2020). Adolescence is a critical life stage for identity formation (Allen and McKenzie, 2015; Crocetti, 2017) where teenagers strive for mastery and autonomy (Featherman et al, 2019), individuate from their parents (Levpuscek, 2006), and gravitate toward their peer groups to have their social and esteem needs met (Allen and Loeb, 2015). Gou et al (2020, p. 2) argue that adolescents are “more vulnerable than adults to mental health problems, in particular during a lockdown, because they are in a transition phase... with increasing importance of peers, and struggling with their often brittle self-esteem.”

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