The impact of lockdown stress and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health among university students in Germany
Open accessAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a shutdown of universities in Germany. In a longitudinal design, we compared mental health (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints) of university students in Germany before (June to August 2019) and in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (June 2020) and determined the impact of pandemic-related stress and loneliness on students’ mental health in self-report online surveys. We investigated 443 participants (mean age 22.8 years), among them 77% female, and 10.4% medical students. A small increase of depression mean scores was observed ( F (1,420) = 5.21; p = .023), anxiety and somatic complaints have not significantly changed. There was a medium increase in loneliness from pre-pandemic scores to the pandemic situation ( F (1,423) = 30.56; p < .001). Analyzed with regression analyses, current loneliness and pre-pandemic distress represented the strongest associations with mental health during the pandemic. Additionally, health-related concerns during the pandemic were associated with symptoms of depression [ b = 0.21; 95%CI(0.08; 0.34); t = 3.12; p = .002], anxiety [ b = 0.07; 95%CI(0.01; 0.12); t = 2.50; p = .013], somatic complaints [ b = 0.33; 95%CI(0.18; 0.47); t = 4.49; p < .001], and loneliness [ b = 0.10; 95%CI(0.03; 0.17); t = 2.74; p = .006]. Social stress due to the pandemic situation was associated with loneliness [ b = 0.38; 95%CI(0.32; 0.45); t = 11.75; p < .001]. The results imply that university students represent a risk group for psychosocial long-term ramifications of the pandemic.
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Feelings of loneliness and lack of social connection due to the pandemic were related to mental health concerns and decreases in coping with stress.
“In contrast, feelings of loneliness and lack of social connection due to the pandemic were related to mental health concerns and decreases in coping with stress (Matos et al., 2021;Werner et al., 2021).”
From RESILIENCE, COPING, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ACROSS THE GLOBE – AN UPDATE: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? (2023) · cites this paper as Werner et al., 2021
The Discussion reports that loneliness was associated with depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms among university students during the pandemic, and links distancing measures to reduced social contact. It does not report a decrease in students’ ability to cope with stress; its discussion of coping instead suggests that some students may have found adaptive ways to maintain contact. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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References 38 · Cited by 153
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- Authors
- Werner, A. M., Tibubos, A. N., Mülder, L. M., Reichel, J. L., Schäfer, M., Heller, S., Pfirrmann, D., Edelmann, D., Dietz, P., Rigotti, T., & Beutel, M. E.
- Affiliations
- University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Werner, Antonia M.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2021-11-22
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 22637-22637
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8609027
- OpenAlex
- W3160729297
- Cited by
- 153
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 45 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 18.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- The research derived from the project Healthy Campus Mainz, which is funded by BARMER health insurance, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) Mainz and the University Medical Center of the JGU Mainz.
- Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Student Stress and Coping
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Keywords
- COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness, university students, mental health, depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, social stress, university closure
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, Adult, Anxiety, Depression, Female, Germany, Humans, Loneliness, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Mental Health, Quarantine, Surveys and Questionnaires, Social Isolation, Stress, Psychological, Students, Time Factors, Universities, Sex Distribution, Young Adult, Self Report, Pandemics
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