Does COVID-19 affect mental health and substance use in young adults?

BACKGROUND: Mental health has been impacted by COVID-19 throughout the United States and beyond. The mental health and well-being were further affected with excessive substance use during the pandemic. The aim of this research was to explore how the COVID-19 affects the mental health of the young adults (18-24 years) in the South Jersey area. We also examined the association between mental health symptoms in young adults and substance use during the first and second year of the pandemic. METHODS AND MATERIAL: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with (n = 711) 527 participants that included young adults (18-24 years old) across university campus in south jersey and in the community cohorts. Multinomial regression analysis and Chi-squared test were used to explore the association between mental symptoms and substance use. Data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet for descriptive statistics and Python 3.0 scikit-learn package. RESULTS: The study showed that "Lonely" and "Hopeless" were the top two mental health symptoms. It was observed that the symptoms of "Lonely" and "Hopeless" increased for both males and females. In general, males seemed to be affected more than females in this study for mental health symptoms. For substance use, "Nervous" and "Smoking" showed positive correlation in 2020 and "Hopeless" and "Alcohol" were positively correlated in 2021. CONCLUSIONS: Young adults' mental health symptoms and substance use has been proven to be affected through the pandemic and this research results even though localized will assist the community and educational institutions to plan better support to assist young adults with better health and wellness initiatives.

University Students' Ability to Assess Misinformation About COVID-19.

In a university student survey on COVID-19 information assessment, 66% participants identified the falsehood of all misinformation statements and 66% provided web page URLs that are adequate in supporting statement accuracy assessment. The most cited web resources were government websites (43%) and media reports (30%). Those who identified misinformation falsehood were more likely to have higher GPA and liberal-leaning political views, and to implement evidence-based COVID prevention measures including mask-wearing and not self-medicating on (hydroxy-)chloroquine.

Effective use of online COVID-19 information and eHealth information literacy among US university students.

Objective: This study aimed to understand students' ability to search the Internet for COVID-19 information and apply it to evaluate the veracity of specific statements. Participants: Undergraduate students (N = 239) at a US university completed a Web-based questionnaire in September-October 2020. Methods: The questionnaire included self-reported measures of online health information literacy, COVID-19 knowledge, and anxiety along with exercises on searching and evaluating COVID information online. Results: Students reported moderate levels of information literacy (76%, 3.8 out of 5), but did not perform as well while searching the Internet for COVID-19 information (average accuracy: 65%, 10.5 out of 16 points). Students with higher Internet exercise scores reported higher GPA, higher household income, and liberal political views, and were more likely to follow public health measures [ie, social distancing, mask wearing, and not self-medicating with (hydroxy)chloroquine]. Conclusions: University students may overestimate their information literacy while struggling with searching the Internet for accurate COVID-19 information.