Longitudinal changes in mental health among medical students in China during the COVID-19 epidemic: depression, anxiety and stress at 1-year follow -up

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of COVID-19 on the mental health of Chinese medical students at 1-year of follow-up. From 2 February 2020 to 23 February 2021, we conducted three waves of research online (T1 = during outbreak, T2 = controlling period, T3 = 1 year after outbreak). The survey collected demographic data and several self reporting questionnaires to measure the depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms. A total of 4002 participants complete the whole research phases. The study major, grade level and gender were the main factors related to psychological distress caused by the COVID-19 crisis. Importantly, medical knowledge has a protective effect on medical students’ psychological distress during the COVID-19 period.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• medical students
• China
• psychological distress
• 1-year longitudinal study

Authors’ contributions

KW, CYZ, ZJL and LZ planned and supervised the study. FQY constructed the questionnaires. GJJ contributed to the research design. JGY and JCM performed the administrative and technical support. TTC and RRS acquired the data. DDL, LZ and JMD performed the statistical analysis. All authors drafted the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Anhui Medical University (2020H009). All participants signed an online consent form at the beginning of the study.

Availability of data and materials

The data used are not publicly available due to privacy restrictions but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82090034, 31970979, 81971689, 81771456, 31771222), University Natural Science Research Project of Anhui Province (KJ2019A0239); Humanities and Social Sciences Project of Anhui Province (SK2019A0177).