Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological well-being of adolescents by gender identity

Abstract

Objective: To describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological well-being of adolescents in Catalan schools by gender identity, and to compare coping strategies adopted to manage the health crisis and their relationship with the self-perceived impact of COVID-19 on mental health.

Method: Cross-sectional study in educational centres that includes 1171 adolescents over 15 years old from October to November 2021. Multivariate logistic regression models were built to evaluate the association between coping strategies with self-perceived impact of the pandemic on mental health.

Results: A greater proportion of girls perceived a worsening in mental health than boys due to COVID-19 (36.9% and 17.8%, respectively). The main emotions reported for both girls and boys were worry and boredom. The study found an association between positive coping strategies with less adverse mental health among girls, whereas unhealthy habits were associated with a higher probability of declaring worsening of mental health for both girls and boys.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological well-being in adolescents and a clearly worse impact on girls. It is important to keep monitoring the medium- and long-term secondary impacts of the pandemic on mental health outcomes of adolescents and to gather information that can improve services for the development of healthy coping strategies during health crises like COVID-19, which include gender perspective.

Keywords: Adolescentes; Adolescents; Bienestar psicológico; COVID-19; Cross-sectional studies; Escuelas; Estudio transversal; Gender identity; Identidad de género; Psychological well-being; Schools.