The consequences of a year of the COVID-19 pandemic for the mental health of young adult twins in England and Wales

[摘要] Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives, not onlythrough the infection itself but also through the measures takento control the spread of the virus (e.g. lockdown).AimsHere, we investigated how the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented lockdown affected the mental health of young adults inEngland and Wales.MethodWe compared the mental health symptoms of up to 4773 twins intheir mid-20s in 2018 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) andduring four-wave longitudinal data collection during the pandemic in April, July and October 2020, and in March 2021 (T2–T5)using phenotypic and genetic longitudinal designs.ResultsThe average changes in mental health were small to medium andmainly occurred from T1 to T2 (average Cohen d = 0.14). Despitethe expectation of catastrophic effects of the pandemic onmental health, we did not observe trends in worsening mentalhealth during the pandemic (T3–T5). Young people with preexisting mental health problems were disproportionatelyaffected at the beginning of the pandemic, but their increasedproblems largely subsided as the pandemic persisted. Twinanalyses indicated that the aetiology of individual differences inmental health symptoms did not change during the lockdown(average heritability 33%); the average genetic correlationbetween T1 and T2–T5 was 0.95, indicating that genetic effectsbefore the pandemic were substantially correlated with geneticeffects up to a year later.ConclusionsWe conclude that on average the mental health of young adultsin England and Wales has been remarkably resilient to the effectsof the pandemic and associated lockdown.

[学科分类] 计算机科学（综合）

[关键词] Mental health;COVID-19;lockdown;young adults;pandemic