Adolescent and young adult experiences of stress and poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic
Adolescents and young adults may have experienced unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not a lot of research has been conducted to understand stress during the pandemic specifically for these age groups.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
The goals of our study were to identity what adolescents and young adults found stressful during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these stressors were related to mental health and substance use.
What we found was that the most commonly reported stressors during the pandemic were not being able to spend time with friends, feeling lonely or isolated, remote learning for school, college, or university, and uncertainty about the future.
Many of the stressors that we asked about were also found to be related to poor mental health including depression and anxiety. Fewer stressors were related to at-risk alcohol or cannabis use.
These finding can provide useful information to inform future pandemics and recovery efforts.
Read the paper — Youth COVID-19 stressors and associations with self-perceived health, depression, anxiety, and at-risk alcohol and cannabis use by Tracie O. Afifi, Janique Fortier, Samantha Salmon, Tamara Taillieu, Ana Osorio, Leslie Roos, Ashley Stewart-Tufescu, Lil Tonmyr, Andrea Gonzalez, Melissa Kimber, Jitender Sareen, and Harriet L. MacMillan.
