An online psychological test of university students in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak revealed that all of them were in the clinical range for stress and anxiety. This assessment was completed during a pre-intervention stage of a study on the effects on mind-body intervention for students in week four of quarantine in Italy. Furthermore, the study conducted by the University of Salerno, Italy, published in the Frontiers of Psychology journal, found that the negative affect, which implies feelings of emotional distress, during the pandemic were substantially above average. [1]
COVID-19 has caused stress and anxiety among university students. Photo Credit: Shutterstock
In the assessment, 311 undergraduate and graduate students (mean age of 31.3 years) scored high on selected measures for stress, anxiety, and global distress. The majority of the students in the sample size for this research were female. This is also consistent with the recent studies conducted on undergraduate college students in China and in the US that have found that students are suffering higher levels of anxiety during the COVID-19 outbreak. The COVID-19-related stressors in these studies generally include economic stressors, effects on daily-life, and academic delays for university students. The findings of these studies indicate that public health measures are vital to monitor the mental health of students during the pandemic and in its aftermath. [2] [3]
For the latest updates on COVID-19, please visit the CDC and the NIH. [4] [5]
