Impact on the mental health of undergraduate students and their parents at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

It is very likely that if a child is anxious, stressed or depressed, someone at home is also anxious, stressed or depressed. That is why the objective was to determine the association between the mental health of parents according to that of undergraduated students in a Peruvian population during the first wave of COVID-19. An analytical, multicenter, cross-sectional research was carried out, where parents and children were surveyed with the DASS-21 scale, making crosses and adjusting for some other variables. Of the 1832 students and 1832 heads of family surveyed, according to having a severe presentation, 35% of the parents had stress (p<0.001) and 25% had depression (p<0.001), if their children had severe stress, anxiety or depression, respectively. If the head of the family presented moderate/severe depression it was associated with their children having depression or anxiety;the father of the family having moderate/severe anxiety was associated with the children also having depression or anxiety and the heads of the family presenting moderate/severe stress had an association with the children having anxiety and stress (up to here all values p<0.002);as well as, that the heads of the household were women (p=0.034). An evident association was found between the mental health problems of the children and those of their parents, which should alert us to the fact that there are entire households with mental problems, and that they are related to the pathologies they suffer from.