The rapid change in mental health among college students after introduction of on-campus quarantine during the 2022 Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown.

Objectives: Among the various impacts of disasters in terms of emotions, quarantine has been proven to result in significant increases in mental health problems. Studies of psychological resilience during outbreaks of epidemics tend to focus on long-term social quarantine. In contrast, insufficient studies have been conducted examining how rapidly negative mental health outcomes occur and how these outcomes change over time. We evaluated the time course of psychological resilience (over three different phases of quarantine) among students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University to investigate the influence of unexpected changes on college students. Methods: An online survey was conducted from 5 to 7 April 2022. A structured online questionnaire was administered using a retrospective cohort trial design. Before 9 March (Period 1), individuals engaged in their usual activities without restrictions. From 9 to 23 March (Period 2), the majority of students were asked to remain in their dormitories on campus. From 24 March to early April (Period 3), restrictions were relaxed, and students were gradually allowed to participate in essential activities on campus. We quantified dynamic changes in the severity of students' depressive symptoms over the course of these three periods. The survey consisted of five sets of self-reported questions: demographic information, lifestyle/activity restrictions, a brief mental health history, COVID-19-related background, and the Beck Depression Inventory, second edition. Results: A total of 274 college students aged 18-42 years (mean = 22.34; SE = 0.24) participated in the study (58.39% undergraduate students, 41.61% graduate students; 40.51% male, 59.49% female). The proportion of students with depressive symptoms was 9.1% in Period 1, 36.1% in Period 2, and 34.67% in Period 3. Depressive symptoms increased notably with the introduction of the quarantine in Periods 2 and 3. Lower satisfaction with the food supplied and a longer duration of physical exercise per day were found to be positively associated with changes in depression severity in Periods 2 and 3. Quarantine-related psychological distress was more evident in students who were in a romantic relationship than in students who were single. Conclusion: Depressive symptoms in university students rapidly increased after 2 weeks of quarantine and no perceptible reversal was observed over time. Concerning students in a relationship, ways to take physical exercise and to relax should be provided and the food supplied should be improved when young people are quarantined.

Autistic traits and gender modulate emotion changes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show an enhanced response to stressors, and gender plays an important role in stress response. Thus, autistic traits (ATs) in the general population and gender may regulate the emotion changes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, participants were divided into higher and lower ATs groups. The generalized linear models were used to estimate the effects of the independent variables (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic status (before, during), gender (male, female), and AT groups (higher ATs, lower ATs) and their interactions on emotions measured by the Positive and Negative Affect scales. The results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic reduced positive emotions and increased fear and anger. Furthermore, compared with the status before the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals with higher ATs and females experienced stronger anger and fear than individuals with lower ATs and males during the pandemic. The present study revealed the emotional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and greater emotional susceptibility to the pandemic among individuals with higher ATs and females. Our findings provide prospective evidence for understanding the ASD/ATs-related enhanced response to pathogen threat-related stressors and have implications for COVID-19 crisis interventions.