ArticleThe Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine2025
Mental Health Symptoms Among US College Students Before, Early, and Late Into the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Analysis.
Article in The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- COVID-19 Stress and Resilience: A Longitudinal Cohort Study of First-Year College Students.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
- Expansion of Colleges' Legal Responsibilities Regarding Student Mental Health.Current psychiatry reports · 2025Review
- Influence of Lifestyle Habits on Psychological Well-Being of University Students: A Quantitative Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Analysis of the Factorial Structure and Reliability of the Social Determinants of Mental Health Questionnaire for Young Adults (SDMH).European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- The relationship between martial arts practice experience and psychological resilience among Chinese college freshmen: the mediating role of self-control and the moderating role of perceived social support.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTo study how COVID-19 stress-related factors and changes in psychosocial resources during the pandemic contributed to changes in mental health symptoms among first-year college students during the pandemic.
methodsUsing data on 339 first-year students (ages 18-20) at a large public university in North Carolina, we evaluated changes in anxiety and depression symptoms from before to early and later stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we estimated longitudinal associations of chronic stress, COVID-19 stress/stressors and psychosocial resources with anxiety and depression symptoms using a first-difference model.
resultsWe found that mental health symptoms increased significantly 4 months into the pandemic. Eighteen months into the pandemic, depression symptoms had returned to prepandemic levels, but anxiety symptoms had not. Chronic stress, social isolation, and distanced learning were significant risk factors; resilience was significantly protective. Results varied by the presence/absence of moderate-severe anxiety/depression symptoms prepandemic. DISCUSSION: Mental health symptoms for first-year college students were at already high levels prepandemic and have not improved 18 months into the pandemic. Colleges may help address this growing mental health crisis through bolstering social connectedness and resilience.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.