Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic provided an extraordinary and naturalistic context to observe young people’s psychosocial profiles and to study how a condition of environmental deprivation and lack of direct social contact, affects the well-being and health status of adolescents. The study explored whether the COVID-19 outbreak changes, in the short term, the acute well-being perception in adolescents, as measured by a Personalized Well-Being Index (PWBI) and the four components affecting health (i.e., lifestyle habits, social context, emotional status, mental skills), in a sample of early adolescent students. Data from 10 schools were collected on 1019 adolescents (males 48.3%, mean age 12.53 ± 1.25 y). Measurements were obtained at two time points, in September/October 2019, (baseline condition, BC) as part of the “A new purpose for promotion and eVAluation of healTh and well-being Among healthy teenageRs” (AVATAR) project and during the Italian Lockdown Phase (mid–late April 2020, LP), with the same students using an online questionnaire. During COVID-19 quarantine, adolescents showed a lower PWBI (p < 0.001) as compared to the BC. Considering the four health-related well-being components, lifestyle habits (p < 0.001), social context (p < 0.001), and emotional status (p < 0.001), showed significantly lower values during LP than BC. However, mental skills, in LP, displayed a significant increase as compared to BC (p < 0.001). In this study, we have provided data on the personalized well-being index and the different components affecting health in adolescents during the COVID-19 lockdown, showing a general decrease in well-being perception, expressed in lifestyle habits, social, and emotional components, demonstrating detrimental effects in the first phase of quarantine on adolescents’ psychosocial profiles. Our results shed new light on adolescence as a crucial period of risk behavior, especially when social support is lacking.
Highlights
According to an integrated approach between the variables and the components, the key findings can be summarized in the following points: (i) during the lockdown phase, adolescents showed a lower well-being perception as shown by the decreased personalized wellbeing index (PWBI); (ii) the four areas, composing PWBI, maintaining the same order of importance, changed significantly in percentage terms, increasing their contribute to the emotional status during quarantine; (iii) lifestyle habits, social context, and emotional status, in absolute values, decreased during quarantine compared to baseline conditions, whereas mental skills were enhanced during the COVID-19 outbreak
The results showed that PWBI significantly fell during COVID-19 quarantine and its breakdown corresponded to a lower score in three of four components, which are lifestyle, social context, and emotional status
We showed a general decreased in well-being perception in the acute phase of the COVID-19 lockdown
Summary
The COVID-19 outbreak has profoundly changed the lives of many people across the world. Evidence obtained during SARS, MERS, and Ebola, have documented the negative long-term effects associated with quarantine and isolation, including anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and post-traumatic stress disorders, mostly in patients and health-care workers [1,2]. Not much is known about the acute effects on ordinary citizens, such as children and adolescents, representing an important gap for research [3,4]. These, less likely to be infected with COVID-19, are not unresponsive to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic [5]. In adults, the adverse outcomes of the pandemic are mainly related to fear of being infected, job loss, and stigma [6,7,8], whereas
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