Session Information
05 SES 06 A, Promoting Wellbeing and Addressing Loneliness and Parental Substance Abuse
Paper Session
Contribution
The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of children and adolescents is internationally widely reported. Meta-analyses pointed out that the global pooled prevalence of psychological disorders for children and adolescents not affected by mental health problems before the pandemic was 20.95 % (Raccanello et al., 2022). High rates of anxiety were especially significant (Loades et al., 2020) and prevalence rates for anxiety in youth varied globally from 2-74 % (Hossain et al., 2022). By now, it has also been found that the increase in symptoms did not change when examined longitudinally (Samji et al., 2022). Therefore, further worsening of mental problems must be assumed in the long-term course (Kauhanen et al., 2022).
Since anxiety is a multifaceted construct, the type of anxiety evolved is of high relevance. Regarding social anxiety the assumptions could be mixed. Social Anxiety may have increased during the pandemic since fewer or no opportunities for social interactions were offered. On the other side social anxiety also may have decreased since social pressures decreased. Generalized anxiety may have increased due to the pandemic and various other negative global events (Barendse et al., 2022). Besides feelings of generalized anxiety, many students were also found to be affected by COVID-19 related anxiety (Krammer et al., 2022). The most cited pandemic-related fear was that of contracting the virus themselves or fearing that a loved one might be infected (Samji et al., 2022).
Internalizing symptoms like social anxiety and loneliness show conceptual similarities and often co-occur, (Danneel et al., 2020). In fact, loneliness was one of the most common experienced feelings during the pandemic (Jamil et al., 2022). The comorbidity of social anxiety and loneliness is associated with a higher amount of social and academic difficulties as well as with greater life-dissatisfaction, increased sensitivity for social threat and social withdrawal (Danneel et al., 2020).
Meta-analyses identified risk and protective factors for child and adolescent mental health during times of covid-19. Female gender has been consistently identified as a risk factor for anxiety (e.g. Samji et al., 2022), but when it comes to loneliness, contradictory results can be found. Some studies (e.g. Kayaoglu & Bascillar ,2022) identified female gender as a risk factor while others could not find differences in the mean levels of loneliness between boys and girls (Danneel et al., 2020).
Also regarding the age groups different results were found. Some studies pointed out that older children and adolescents experienced higher stress levels, more frequent anxiety, worries and feelings of loneliness (Kavaoglu & Bascillar, 2022; Samji et al., 2022) Contrarily, other studies reported that younger individuals exhibited higher psychopathological symptoms of anxiety and loneliness across all assessment waves (Benke et al., 2022).
Therefore, it is of great necessity to not only look carefully at the specific types and frequency of children's and adolescents' fears in times of global exceptional situations such as the pandemic, but also to shed light on risk and protective factors of the population. This is necessary to develop appropriate prevention and intervention strategies to protect children and adolescents and to support their healthy development.
This paper aims at identifying differences in students’ self-reported loneliness, generalized, social and covid-related anxiety symptoms and exploring explanatory approaches. Accordingly, the following research questions are addressed:
- What anxieties and levels of loneliness do Austrian students report in times of COVID-19?
- What are the differences and relationships between self-reported anxieties, loneliness and individual and socio-economic/family-related factors of students in Austria?
- To what extend can individual and socio-economic/family-related factors explain the differences in self-reported anxieties and loneliness from students in times of COVID-19?
Method
The present study was part of a larger project exploring the challenges and possibilities due to the pandemic in a representative sample of eighteen primary and eleven secondary schools in Styria, a federal state of Austria. A mixed-method design considering different perspectives was used: the view of teachers, school principals, parents and students. For the present study, the perspective of students and parents is of particular relevance, which was explored by a cross-sectional online (students) and paper-pencil (parents) survey conducted from April to June 2021. A team of trained researchers administered the online questionnaire with the students during one school lesson. Parents received a paper-pencil questionnaire together with the request for informed consent for the participation of their children in the study. Data were collected from a representative sample of 504 students (50.2 % girls; 49.8 % boys, aged 8-15) from primary (n=269) and secondary schools (n=235). Additionally, data from 449 parents/guardians of the students aged 26-64 years (M=41.03, SD=5.77) were collected. The Parents-questionnaire included questions about socio-economic and family-related factors (e.g. migration background, highest education-level and family-climate). At the beginning of the students-online-questionnaire, they were asked about their gender and age. To identify anxiety-related problems, two scales in reduced form of the German “Screening for Child Anxiety Related Disorders” (SCARED-D, Birmaher et al., 1999) were used. The first scale “Social Phobia” consisted of six Items (e.g. I don’t like to be with people I don’t know well), the second scale “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” consisted of five Items (e.g. I am someone who worries a lot) and could be answered on a five-point Likert scale (1=don’t agree; 5=agree exactly). Cronbach’s alpha in the present study for the whole scale (11 items) was .84, and for both subscales .77. Two items were implemented to measure the frequency of corona-related anxiety (e.g. During the past few months I have been worried about the Coronavirus), which could be answered on a six-point Likert Scale (1=all the time; 6=never; ? =.73). To examine students’ experiences of loneliness, a scale by Gasteiger-Klicpera and Klicpera (2003) was used, consisting of six Items (e.g. I have no one to talk to in class.) and could be answered on a five-point Likert scale (1= not true, 5=exactly true; ? =.83). Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 28. Mean differences were tested with multivariate analyses and Pearson correlations were calculated to analyze correlation hypotheses.
Expected Outcomes
Preliminary findings from item-based frequency-analyses showed, that in terms of social anxiety (M=2.86, SD=.95) 41% of the students reported that it was rather/exactly true that they did not like to be with people they did not know well and 39.4 % reported that it was rather/exactly true that they were nervous when they had to do something while being watched. Regarding generalized anxiety (M=2.69, SD=.99) 32.8 % of the students reported, that it was rather/exactly true that they worried about the future and 31.3 % that it was rather/exactly true that they worried about things that already happened. Compared to this, students were less likely to report school-related feelings of loneliness (M=1.58, SD=.74). In terms of covid-related fears, students reported that they had higher fears about a family-member contracting COVID-19 during the last months (M=2.56, SD=1.76) than worrying about the virus in general (M=3.07, SD=1.98). This is in line with international findings from Samji et al. (2022). Initial analysis of possible differences in the reported scores by individual factors revealed that female students reported significantly higher scores than male students regarding social anxiety symptoms (p=.01). With respect to corona-specific worries, male students were found to score significantly higher than female students (p=.01). First correlation analyses about relationships between anxiety, loneliness and socio-economic/individual factors showed a highly significant positive correlation between feelings of loneliness and the students age (p=.01) and a highly significant negative correlation with the parents’ education level (p=.05). A more detailed analysis will be conducted to identify further differences and correlations to draw further conclusions on whether the changed life situation, caused by the pandemic, also results in a change of risk and protective factors for anxiety in childhood and adolescence.
References
Barendse, M. E. A., et al. (2022). Longitudinal Change in Adolescent Depression and Anxiety Symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12781 Benke, C., et al. (2022). One year after the COVID-19 outbreak in Germany: long-term changes in depression, anxiety, loneliness, distress and life satisfaction. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 0123456789, 20–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-022-01400-0 Birmaher, B., et al. (1999). Psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): A replication study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 38, 1230-1236. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199910000-00011 Danneel, S., et al. (2020). Loneliness, Social Anxiety Symptoms, and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: Longitudinal Distinctiveness and Correlated Change. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(11), 2246–2264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01315-w Gasteiger-Klicpera, B., & Klicpera, Ch. (2003). Warum fühlen sich Schüler einsam? Einflussfaktoren der Einsamkeit im schulischen Kontext. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 52 (1), 1-16. Hossain, M. M., Nesa, F., Das, J., Aggad, R., & Tasnim, S. (2022). Global burden of mental health problems among children and adolescents during COVID-19 pandemic: An umbrella review. Psychiatry Research, 317(January), 114814. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114814 Jamil, A., et al. (2022). Loneliness and mental health related impacts of COVID-19: a narrative review. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2022-0032 Kauhanen, L., et al. (2022). A systematic review of the mental health changes of children and young people before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 0123456789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-022-02060-0 Kayaoğlu, K., & Başcıllar, M. (2022). Determining the relationship between loneliness and depression in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, May, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12384 Krammer, M., et al. (2022). „Durch die Coronapandemie belastet?“ Der Einfluss von durch COVID-19 induzierter Angst auf die sozial-emotionale Entwicklung 12- bis 13-Jähriger in Österreich. Zeitschrift Für Bildungsforschung, 12(1), 43–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s35834-022-00336-8 Loades, M. E., et al. (2020). Rapid systematic review: The impact of social isolation adolescents in the context of COVID-19. Journal of the American of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(11), 1218–1239. Raccanello, D., et al. (2022). Eighteen Months of COVID-19 Pandemic Through the Lenses of Self or Others: A Meta-Analysis on Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health. Child and Youth Care Forum, 0123456789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-022-09706-9 Samji, H., et al. (2022). Review: Mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and youth – a systematic review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 27(2), 173–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12501
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