SynthesisJournal of global health2023
Impact of COVID-19 mitigations on anxiety and depression amongst university students: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of global health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Effects of Tai Chi on Mental Health in college students: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in public health · 2026Pooled it
- Global Research on Pandemics or Epidemics and Mental Health: A Natural Language Processing Study.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2024Pooled it
- Contextual stressors and multidimensional mental health among university students during the COVID-19 period: a construct-level network analysis.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Disentangling Heterogeneity in the Co-Developmental of Anxiety and Depression During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights From Cross-Lagged Panel Network.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Prevalence and risk factors of depressive and anxiety symptoms and functional constipation among university students in Eastern China.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Prolactin-Releasing Peptide System as a Potential Mechanism of Stress Coping: Studies in Male Rats.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- No particularly negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of individuals with higher levels of childhood trauma.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Effects of Oral Ingestion of L-Ornithine on Mental Stress and Fatigue Based on the Trier Social Stress Test in Healthy Humans: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel-Group Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Symptoms Among Students in Croatia During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Revealing the Unseen: Detecting Negative Symptoms in Students.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Background: While much research has addressed mental health concerns related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there remains a scarcity of studies specifically exploring the changes in anxiety and depression among university students before and after the implementation of COVID-19 mitigation measures. Methods: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched databases including MEDLINE (Ovid), EMBASE (Ovid), PsycINFO (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), ERIC (EBSCO), the WHO COVID-19 database, Scopus, and Science Citation Index (Web of Science) as of 15 February 2023. We included studies that used a validated tool to measure changes in anxiety or depression at two distinct time points - before (T1) and during (T2); during (T2) and after (T3); or before (T1) and after (T3) COVID-19 mitigation. The quality of studies was assessed using an adapted Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for longitudinal studies. Utilising random-effects models, we synthesised changes in continuous outcomes as standardised mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and binary outcomes as risk difference (RD) with 95% CI. Results: In total, 15 studies were included in this review, with eight of moderate and seven of high quality. In most of the included studies (n = 13), the majority of participants were women. Eleven studies analysed mental health outcomes between T1 and T2 of COVID-19 mitigations. Continuous symptom changes were a minimal or small improvement for anxiety (SMD = -0.03, 95% CI = -0.24 to 0.19, I Conclusions: Mental health outcomes, especially depressive symptoms, were observed to worsen in university students during COVID-19 mitigations. Despite considerable heterogeneity requiring careful interpretation of results, the impact of COVID-19 mitigations on mental health in university students is evident. Registration: PROSPERO (CRD42021266889).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.