Mental Health Impacts in Argentinean College Students During COVID-19 Quarantine

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Lorena Cecilia López Steinmetz¹  Candela Abigail Leyes¹  María Agustina Dutto Florio¹  Romina Lucrecia López Steinmetz²  Juan Carlos Godoy³  Shao Bing Fong⁴ 

[1] Decanato de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Siglo 21, Córdoba, Argentina;Instituto de Evolución, Ecología Histórica y Ambiente (IDEVEA), Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (UTN) - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina;Laboratorio de Psicología, Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIPsi), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Córdoba, Argentina;University of Melbourne, Faculty of Science, Melbourne, VIC, Australia;

关键词: coronavirus disease (COVID-19);    quarantine;    anxiety;    learned helplessness;    social isolation;    depressive symptoms;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyt.2021.557880

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Background: We aimed to: (1) analyze differences in both general (in terms of psychological well-being/discomfort, social functioning and coping, and psychological distress) and specific (depression, trait-anxiety, negative alcohol-related consequences, and suicidal risk) mental health state (MHS) in college students, residing in four different Argentinean regions (center, north, south, and the most populated) exposed to different spread-rates of the COVID-19; (2) analyze between-group differences in both general and specific MHS indicators at four quarantine sub-periods (twice prior, and twice following the first quarantine extension).Methods: We used a cross-sectional design with a convenience sample including 2,687 college students. Data was collected online during the Argentinean quarantine. We calculated one-way between-groups ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc test.Results: Regionally, the center and the most populated area differed in psychological well-being/discomfort and negative alcohol-related consequences, but not in the remaining MHS indicators. According to the quarantine sub-periods, there were differences in psychological well-being/discomfort, social functioning and coping, psychological distress, and negative alcohol-related consequences. Negative alcohol-related consequences were the only MHS indicator improving over time. For all of the remaining MHS indicators, we found a similar deterioration pattern in the course of time, with mean scores decreasing from the first to the 2nd week of the quarantine pre-extensions, then increasing toward the 1st week of the quarantine post-extension (with some MHS indicators reaching mean scores worse than the start), and then continued to increase.Conclusion: A worsened mean MHS during quarantine suggests that quarantine and its extensions contribute to negative mental health impacts.

【 授权许可】

Unknown