De Coninck, David;
Matthijs, Koen;
Van Bavel, Jan;
Luyten, Patrick;
(2024)
To be a freshman during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-lagged model of severity of depression, mentalizing and epistemic trust.
Personality and Mental Health
, 18
(1)
pp. 80-89.
10.1002/pmh.1598.
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Abstract
Research has shown that severity of depression increase in freshmen during their first months at university due to increased social and academic pressures. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, several cross-sectional studies have suggested that levels of depression in university students are higher than before the pandemic, but longitudinal data are largely lacking. This study investigated severity of depression and negative affect linked to the pandemic among freshmen during their first semester at a large university in Flanders, Belgium. We also investigated whether epistemic trust predicted severity of depression and pandemic-related negative affect, and whether problems with reflective functioning (or mentalizing) mediated these relations. Participants in this two-wave prospective study were 289 first-year students of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of a large Belgian university. We conducted paired samples t-tests and cross-panel analysis to answer the research question. The number of students at risk of clinical depression increased by 41% between T1 (early October 2020) and T2 (late December 2020). Epistemic mistrust at T1 was prospectively associated with an increase in the prevalence and severity of depression at T2. Problems with mentalizing and negative COVID-19-related affect were positively associated with severity of depression at T2, and mediated the association between epistemic mistrust and severity of depression at T2. The findings highlight the key role of epistemic trust in the development of depression among freshmen, with the COVID-19 pandemic presenting an additional source of uncertainty.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | To be a freshman during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-lagged model of severity of depression, mentalizing and epistemic trust |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/pmh.1598 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/pmh.1598 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Depression, freshmen, reflective functioning, mentalizing, cross-lagged, epistemic trust, COVID-19 |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181212 |
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