Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Abstract

To investigate the mental health level of college freshmen during the COVID-19 pandemic, an online questionnaire survey was conducted among 8235 first-year students (50.70% female) in a university in Shandong Province, China in 2020, using the Chinese College Student Mental Health Screening Scale (CCSMHS) that assessed their psychotic symptoms, suicidal behavior and ideation, internalized psychological disorders, externalized psychological disorders and developmental problems. Descriptive analysis showed that during the period of COVID-19, there were 417 students with primary mental disorder, accounting for 5.06%; there were 1256 students with secondary mental disorder, accounting for 15.25%; there were 1,276 students with tertiary mental disorder, accounting for 15.49%. The results of independent-measures t-test showed that there was no significant difference in the detection rates of primary, secondary and tertiary psychological disorders between male and female students, but there were significant differences in hallucination and delusional symptoms, anxiety, inferiority, sensitivity and social phobia between male and female students. One-way analysis of variance showed that students with three different levels of mental disorder had significant differences in employment pressure and academic pressure, among which, compared with students with secondary mental disorder, students with tertiary mental disorder had greater employment pressure and academic pressure. The results of chain mediating model showed that the association between attachment and sleep disorder was independently mediated by interpersonal disturbance and anxiety and was also influenced by the chain mediating effect of interpersonal disturbance and anxiety [Figure 1]. These findings underscore the impact of the early stages of COVID-19 on the mental health of Chinese college students, as well as the role of interpersonal disturbance and anxiety in the process of attachment to sleep disorder.

Biography

Leyi Zhuang currently working in the Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Her passion in improving the health and wellbeing of adolescents, using a quantitative approach and a mixed-methods approach.