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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive restrictions in public and private lives, including a shut-down of face-to-face teaching at universities in Germany. We aimed to examine the impact of these changes on perceived stress, mental health and (study-)related health behavior of students...

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Autores principales: Voltmer, Edgar, Köslich-Strumann, Susen, Walther, Anna, Kasem, Mahmoud, Obst, Katrin, Kötter, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8275908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34256717
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11295-6
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author Voltmer, Edgar
Köslich-Strumann, Susen
Walther, Anna
Kasem, Mahmoud
Obst, Katrin
Kötter, Thomas
author_facet Voltmer, Edgar
Köslich-Strumann, Susen
Walther, Anna
Kasem, Mahmoud
Obst, Katrin
Kötter, Thomas
author_sort Voltmer, Edgar
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive restrictions in public and private lives, including a shut-down of face-to-face teaching at universities in Germany. We aimed to examine the impact of these changes on perceived stress, mental health and (study-)related health behavior of students in a longitudinal study. METHODS: For two timepoints – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic (2019, n = 1377) and the year during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, n = 1867) – we surveyed students of all faculties at one German university for perceptions and preventive behavior regarding the COVID-19 pandemic using standard instruments for stress, anxiety, depression, and behavior and experience patterns. RESULTS: About 90% of students (n = 1633) in 2020 did not have a known contact infected with SARS-CoV-2, while 180 (9.8%) did have one. Only 10 respondents (0.5%) reported an infection with SARS-CoV-2. Wearing masks and washing hands more often were practiced by ≥80% of students. Taking more care about cleanliness (51.8%) and using disinfectants (39.2%) were practiced much less. A higher percentage of female compared with male students and medical/health science students compared with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students engaged more frequently in specific or nonspecific preventive measures. More than three quarters (77.1%) of all students rated their general health as (very) good. There were no significant differences in general health, stress, and depression between 2019 and 2020 in the students who responded at both timepoints. The distribution of behavior and experience patterns for this group showed a slight but significant difference from 2019 to 2020, namely decreasing proportions of students with a healthy pattern and a risk pattern for overexertion. Students with different behavior and experience patterns showed marked differences in perceptions and reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as psychosocial stress and symptoms, with higher scores for mental health symptoms and lower scores in preventive behavior regarding risk patterns. CONCLUSION: Despite massive alterations to students’ lives in 2020, there were only moderate consequences for mental health compared with 2019 in the total student group of this German university. However, identifying students at risk would offer opportunities to foster mental health in relevant subgroups. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11295-6.
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spelling pubmed-82759082021-07-13 The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic Voltmer, Edgar Köslich-Strumann, Susen Walther, Anna Kasem, Mahmoud Obst, Katrin Kötter, Thomas BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive restrictions in public and private lives, including a shut-down of face-to-face teaching at universities in Germany. We aimed to examine the impact of these changes on perceived stress, mental health and (study-)related health behavior of students in a longitudinal study. METHODS: For two timepoints – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic (2019, n = 1377) and the year during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, n = 1867) – we surveyed students of all faculties at one German university for perceptions and preventive behavior regarding the COVID-19 pandemic using standard instruments for stress, anxiety, depression, and behavior and experience patterns. RESULTS: About 90% of students (n = 1633) in 2020 did not have a known contact infected with SARS-CoV-2, while 180 (9.8%) did have one. Only 10 respondents (0.5%) reported an infection with SARS-CoV-2. Wearing masks and washing hands more often were practiced by ≥80% of students. Taking more care about cleanliness (51.8%) and using disinfectants (39.2%) were practiced much less. A higher percentage of female compared with male students and medical/health science students compared with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students engaged more frequently in specific or nonspecific preventive measures. More than three quarters (77.1%) of all students rated their general health as (very) good. There were no significant differences in general health, stress, and depression between 2019 and 2020 in the students who responded at both timepoints. The distribution of behavior and experience patterns for this group showed a slight but significant difference from 2019 to 2020, namely decreasing proportions of students with a healthy pattern and a risk pattern for overexertion. Students with different behavior and experience patterns showed marked differences in perceptions and reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as psychosocial stress and symptoms, with higher scores for mental health symptoms and lower scores in preventive behavior regarding risk patterns. CONCLUSION: Despite massive alterations to students’ lives in 2020, there were only moderate consequences for mental health compared with 2019 in the total student group of this German university. However, identifying students at risk would offer opportunities to foster mental health in relevant subgroups. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11295-6. BioMed Central 2021-07-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8275908/ /pubmed/34256717 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11295-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://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
Voltmer, Edgar
Köslich-Strumann, Susen
Walther, Anna
Kasem, Mahmoud
Obst, Katrin
Kötter, Thomas
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title_full The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title_fullStr The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title_full_unstemmed The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title_short The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in German University students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
title_sort impact of the covid-19 pandemic on stress, mental health and coping behavior in german university students – a longitudinal study before and after the onset of the pandemic
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8275908/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34256717
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11295-6
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