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TUESDAY, Aug. 11, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Depression<\/a>, anxiety<\/a> and inactive lifestyles are all too common among college students, and a new study finds they may have escalated during the initial outbreak of COVID-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n Using a mix of smartphone data and online surveys from more than 200 students, researchers at Dartmouth College determined that the coronavirus pandemic had an immediate impact on the mental health<\/a> of this particular undergraduate group.<\/p>\n The students involved in the study were participating in a research program tracking mental health<\/a> at the New Hampshire university. They reported spikes in depression<\/a> and anxiety<\/a> at the beginning of the pandemic in early March, just as the school pushed students to leave campus and begin remote learning.<\/p>\n While their self-reported anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a> lessened slightly later on in the semester, the study found that their overall anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a> levels remained consistently higher than in previous years.<\/p>\n “We observed a large-scale shift in mental health and behavior compared to the observed baseline established for this group over previous years,” said study author Jeremy Huckins, a lecturer at Dartmouth.<\/p>\n In addition, around spring break period in mid-March, the students reported that their day-to-day lives were dramatically more sedentary than previous terms.<\/p>\n “This was an atypical time for these college students. While spring break is usually a period of decreased stress<\/a> and increased physical activity, spring break 2020 was stressful and confining for the students participating in this study,” Huckins said in a university news release. “We suspect that this was the case for a large number of college students across the country.”<\/p>\n The researchers calculated sedentary time using a smartphone app developed at Dartmouth. The app collected information such as number of phone unlocks, phone usage duration, and sleep<\/a> duration from the student volunteers.<\/p>\n The data on depression<\/a> and anxiety<\/a> was also collected through the app, using weekly, self-reported questionnaires.<\/p>\n The decrease in activity among these students may have been related to lockdown orders implemented at the time.<\/p>\n “We found that when social distancing was recommended by local governments, students were more sedentary and visited fewer locations on any given day,” Huckins said. “Clearly, the impact of COVID-19<\/a> extends beyond the virus and its direct impacts. An unresolved question is if mental health and physical activity will continue to degrade over time, or if we will see a recovery, and how long that recovery will take.”<\/p>\n The study was published recently in the Journal of Medical Internet Research<\/i>.<\/p>\n — Serena McNiff<\/p>\n ![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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