Nontraditional Midlife and Older Adults in the University: An Examination of Mental Health Conditions Before and During the COVID-19 Academic Shutdown

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in changes in academic and social settings, such as shutdowns of academic institutions, remote learning, and social distancing from colleagues and peers, as well as changes in physical and mental health. While much of the literature has examined how the pandemic impacted “traditional” university students (ages 18-24), few studies have explored the impact on nontraditional university students specifically. Nontraditional students often vary in chronological age and place them at differing life stages than traditional students, which may relate to variability in overall well-being. The current study explores potential differences between nontraditional midlife university students and older adult university students in mental health responses before and during the COVID-19 shutdown. METHODS: A subsample of university student data from Okun et al. (2022) using nontraditional midlife and older adult university students (n = 49; Mage = 47.38 years (SD = 6.18; range 40-68)) who completed the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) both before and during the COVID-19 was utilized for analyses. The DASS-21 was used to measure the emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress that a person may experience, with higher scores showing higher levels of severity. RESULTS: All dependent variables showed relatively normal distributions and Levene's test of the equality of variances showed approximately equal groups (except stress during COVID-19). Independent t-tests examined group differences between nontraditional midlife university students (n = 41; range 40-54) and nontraditional older adult university students (n = 8, range 55-68). Analyses revealed no differences between nontraditional midlife students and older adult students in stress, anxiety, or depression before the COVID-19 academic shutdown (see Table 1). No significant differences were found between the nontraditional midlife students (M = 3.88, SD = 4.44) and older adult students (M = 2.50, SD = 2.20) in anxiety during the COVID-19 academic shutdown, independent t(47) = 0.85, n.s. nor between the nontraditional midlife students (M = 6.46, SD = 5.66) and older adult students (M = 3.63, SD = 3.82) in depression during the COVID-19 academic shutdown, independent t(47) = 1.35, n.s. Based on adjusted analysis, nontraditional midlife students (M = 9.27, SD = 6.00) were more likely to experience elevated stress than the older adult students (M = 6.25, SD = 1.91) during the COVID-19 academic shutdown, independent t(36.4) = 2.61, p < .05 (see Table 2). CONCLUSIONS: Previous research shows that people tend to display increased emotional regulation and positive emotionality as they age. These findings are congruent with our results suggesting nontraditional older adult students are better protected against psychological stress compared to their younger counterparts. Despite the non-significance of the anxiety and depression results, the difference in means (lower for nontraditional older adult students) may suggest a similar trend for these outcomes as well. Limitations of the study include the disproportionate sample size between midlife and older adult participants. Further research can examine the differences between timepoints pre- and during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess trajectories of outcomes. THIS RESEARCH WAS FUNDED BY: None.