The consequences of a year of the COVID-19 pandemic for the mental health of young adult twins in England and Wales

BJPsych Open

article

Kaili Rimfeld¹  Margherita Malanchini²  Ryan Arathimos³  Agnieszka Gidziela²  Oliver Pain⁴  Andrew McMillan⁴  Rachel Ogden⁴  Louise Webster⁴  Amy E. Packer⁴  Nicholas G. Shakeshaft⁴  Kerry L. Schofield⁴  Jean-Baptiste Pingault⁵  Andrea G. Allegrini⁵  Argyris Stringaris⁶  Sophie von Stumm⁷  Cathryn M. Lewis⁸  Robert Plomin⁴ 

[1] Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, UK and Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London;Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, and Department of Psychology, Queen Mary University of London;Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, and National Institute for Health Research ,(NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre;Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London;Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London;Mood, Brain & Development Unit, Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health;Psychology in Education Research Centre, Department of Education, University of York;Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London, and Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King's College London

关键词: Mental health;    COVID-19;    lockdown;    young adults;    pandemic;   

DOI  :  10.1192/bjo.2022.506

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: Canadian Society For Pharmaceutical Sciences (Csps).

【 摘 要 】

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, not onlythrough the infection itself but also through the measures takento control the spread of the virus (e.g. lockdown).AimsHere, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented lockdown affected the mental health of young adults inEngland and Wales.MethodWe compared the mental health symptoms of up to 4773 twins intheir mid-20s in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) andduring four-wave longitudinal data collection during the pandemic in April, July and October 2020, and in March 2021 (T2–T5)using phenotypic and genetic longitudinal designs.ResultsThe average changes in mental health were small to medium andmainly occurred from T1 to T2 (average Cohen d = 0.14). Despitethe expectation of catastrophic effects of the pandemic onmental health, we did not observe trends in worsening mentalhealth during the pandemic (T3–T5). Young people with preexisting mental health problems were disproportionatelyaffected at the beginning of the pandemic, but their increasedproblems largely subsided as the pandemic persisted. Twinanalyses indicated that the aetiology of individual differences inmental health symptoms did not change during the lockdown(average heritability 33%); the average genetic correlationbetween T1 and T2–T5 was 0.95, indicating that genetic effectsbefore the pandemic were substantially correlated with geneticeffects up to a year later.ConclusionsWe conclude that on average the mental health of young adultsin England and Wales has been remarkably resilient to the effectsof the pandemic and associated lockdown.

【 授权许可】

CC BY|CC BY-NC-SA|CC BY-NC-ND