What Factors Are Associated with the Decline in Young People’s Mental Health During the Early Stages of the Covid Pandemic?

David (David Patrick) Madden

No 202504, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: The Covid pandemic arrived in Ireland on February 29, 2020. In the following weeks various restrictions were introduced to stem the spread of the disease. Anxiety over the spread of the disease and over the restrictions introduced led to concerns regarding mental health. This paper uses the special Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) survey of young adults aged around 23 in December 2020 to examines the change in mental health compared to the last pre-Covid GUI survey, wave 4. In particular, it applies machine learning (ML) techniques to examine what variables are associated with the transition into depression between the two surveys. Mental health problems in wave 4 are found to play the most significant role with little effect for socioeconomic variables.

Keywords: Mental health; Depression; Lasso; Covid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2025-04
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