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Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has made unprecedented impact on the psychological health of university students, a population vulnerable to distress and mental health disorders. This study investigated psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress) during state-enforced quaranti...

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Autores principales: Sun, Shufang, Goldberg, Simon B., Lin, Danhua, Qiao, Shan, Operario, Don
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7829620/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33494769
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00663-x
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author Sun, Shufang
Goldberg, Simon B.
Lin, Danhua
Qiao, Shan
Operario, Don
author_facet Sun, Shufang
Goldberg, Simon B.
Lin, Danhua
Qiao, Shan
Operario, Don
author_sort Sun, Shufang
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has made unprecedented impact on the psychological health of university students, a population vulnerable to distress and mental health disorders. This study investigated psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress) during state-enforced quarantine among university students in China (N = 1912) through a cross-sectional survey during March and April 2020. RESULTS: Psychiatric symptoms were alarmingly prevalent: 67.05% reported traumatic stress, 46.55% had depressive symptoms, and 34.73% reported anxiety symptoms. Further, 19.56% endorsed suicidal ideation. We explored risk and protective factors of psychological health, including demographic variables, two known protective factors for mental health (mindfulness, perceived social support), four COVID-specific factors (COVID-19 related efficacy, perceived COVID-19 threat, perceived COVID-19 societal stigma, COVID-19 prosocial behavior) and screen media usage. Across symptom domains, mindfulness was associated with lower symptom severity, while COVID-19 related financial stress, perceived COVID-19 societal stigma, and perceived COVID-19 threat were associated with higher symptom severity. COVID-19 threat and COVID-19 stigma showed main and interactive effects in predicting all mental health outcomes, with their combination associated with highest symptom severity. Screen media device usage was positively associated with depression. Female gender and COVID-19 prosocial behavior were associated with higher anxiety, while COVID-19 self-efficacy associated with lower anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest high need for psychological health promotion among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic and inform an ecological perspective on the detrimental role of stigma during an emerging infectious disease outbreak. Interventions targeting multi-level factors, such as promoting mindfulness and social support at individual and interpersonal levels while reducing public stigma about COVID-19, may be particularly promising. Attending to the needs of disadvantaged groups including those financially impacted by COVID-19 is needed.
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spelling pubmed-78296202021-01-25 Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China Sun, Shufang Goldberg, Simon B. Lin, Danhua Qiao, Shan Operario, Don Global Health Research BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has made unprecedented impact on the psychological health of university students, a population vulnerable to distress and mental health disorders. This study investigated psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress) during state-enforced quarantine among university students in China (N = 1912) through a cross-sectional survey during March and April 2020. RESULTS: Psychiatric symptoms were alarmingly prevalent: 67.05% reported traumatic stress, 46.55% had depressive symptoms, and 34.73% reported anxiety symptoms. Further, 19.56% endorsed suicidal ideation. We explored risk and protective factors of psychological health, including demographic variables, two known protective factors for mental health (mindfulness, perceived social support), four COVID-specific factors (COVID-19 related efficacy, perceived COVID-19 threat, perceived COVID-19 societal stigma, COVID-19 prosocial behavior) and screen media usage. Across symptom domains, mindfulness was associated with lower symptom severity, while COVID-19 related financial stress, perceived COVID-19 societal stigma, and perceived COVID-19 threat were associated with higher symptom severity. COVID-19 threat and COVID-19 stigma showed main and interactive effects in predicting all mental health outcomes, with their combination associated with highest symptom severity. Screen media device usage was positively associated with depression. Female gender and COVID-19 prosocial behavior were associated with higher anxiety, while COVID-19 self-efficacy associated with lower anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest high need for psychological health promotion among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic and inform an ecological perspective on the detrimental role of stigma during an emerging infectious disease outbreak. Interventions targeting multi-level factors, such as promoting mindfulness and social support at individual and interpersonal levels while reducing public stigma about COVID-19, may be particularly promising. Attending to the needs of disadvantaged groups including those financially impacted by COVID-19 is needed. BioMed Central 2021-01-25 /pmc/articles/PMC7829620/ /pubmed/33494769 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00663-x Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Sun, Shufang
Goldberg, Simon B.
Lin, Danhua
Qiao, Shan
Operario, Don
Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title_full Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title_fullStr Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title_full_unstemmed Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title_short Psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic in China
title_sort psychiatric symptoms, risk, and protective factors among university students in quarantine during the covid-19 pandemic in china
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7829620/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33494769
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00663-x
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