Psychological Distress among Students in Higher Education: One Year after the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Emilie Schmits, Sarah Dekeyser, Olivier Klein, Olivier Luminet, Vincent Yzerbyt and Fabienne Glowacz
Additional contact information
Emilie Schmits: Psychologie Clinique de la Délinquance, Unité de Recherche Adaptation, Résilience et Changement, Faculté de Psychologie, Logopédie et Sciences de l’Education, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium
Sarah Dekeyser: Centre d’Etude du Comportement Social, Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Olivier Klein: Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Olivier Luminet: Centre d’Etude du Comportement Social, Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Vincent Yzerbyt: Centre d’Etude du Comportement Social, Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Fabienne Glowacz: Psychologie Clinique de la Délinquance, Unité de Recherche Adaptation, Résilience et Changement, Faculté de Psychologie, Logopédie et Sciences de l’Education, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-10

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the psychological well-being of students. Several stressors (such as socioeconomic and education-related contexts) could influence mental health, as well as individual and relational dimensions. This study proposes to evaluate the predictive effect of these factors on anxiety and depressive symptoms among students in higher education one year after the beginning of the pandemic. A sample of 23,307 students (Mage = 20.89; SD = 1.96; 69.08% of women) was assessed through an online self-report questionnaire including adapted and validated measures. The main rates were as follows: 50.6% of students presented anxiety symptoms; 55.1% reported depressive symptoms; 20.8% manifested suicidal ideations; 42.4% saw their financial situation deteriorate; 39.1% felt they were dropping out of school. One year after the beginning of the pandemic, students in higher education are anxious and depressed, especially those who identify as women (for both anxiety and depression) and as a non-binary gender (only for anxiety), experience a deterioration in their financial situation, are dropping out of school, or manifest hostility (for both anxiety and depression). The degree of study affects the symptoms’ severity (Bachelor 2 and 3 for anxiety and Master for depression). Contact with family and friends (for both anxiety and depression) as well as regular physical activity (only for depression) should provide some protection against psychological distress. Policy-makers must make a long-term investment in the well-being and positive mental health of the student community.

Keywords: anxiety; depression; students; high education; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7445/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7445/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:14:p:7445-:d:592963

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().