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Mood and emotional reactivity of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: short-term and long-term effects and the impact of social and socioeconomic stressors.

ABSTRACT: Adolescence is a formative period for socio-emotional development which is threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current longitudinal study examined two aims: (1) the short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on young people's mood (i.e. vigor, tension, and depression levels) and emotional reactivity (i.e. fluctuations in daily mood), and (2) the impact of stressors on mood, emotional reactivity, self-oriented (i.e. maladaptive behavior towards COVID-19 rules) and other-benefitting behaviors (i.e. behavior aimed at helping and comforting others). We conducted an online two-week daily diary study among 462 Dutch adolescents (M_age = 15.27 years, 64% females) and 371 young adults (M_age = 21.49 years, 81% females) in May 2020, with a follow-up in November 2020 (N = 238 and 231, respectively adolescents and young adults). In May 2020, young adults and older relative to younger adolescents showed higher levels and more fluctuations in tension and depression and lower levels of vigor. Vigor levels decreased and tension and depression levels increased between May 2020 and November 2020, especially for younger adolescents. There were positive associations between instability of negative emotions (i.e. tension and depression fluctuations) and the exposure to stressors (i.e. family stress and inequality of online homeschooling) in the adolescent sample. Together, this study demonstrates vulnerability regarding young people's mood and emotional reactivity during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for adolescents who experience more stressors.

SUBMITTER: Green KH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8172919 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundProsocial behaviour can promote positive social interactions and it is a key skill in adolescence. People with emotional problems or psychiatric disorders, such as people with eating disorders might have impairments in prosocial behaviour, due to broader documented difficulties in underlying processes (e.g., mentalizing).MethodsThe aim of this study was to examine prosocial behaviour in adolescents with eating disorders compared to healthy controls, using a computerised behavioural task. Adolescents (N = 123) including patients with eating disorders (n = 61) and healthy adolescents (n = 62) played a four-player computerised Prosocial Cyberball Game with three pre-programmed avatar players. During the task, participants witnessed the exclusion of one of the players, and subsequently had the opportunity to compensate for this by throwing the ball more often to the excluded player. Throughout the game, participants rated the level of negative emotion in themselves and in the excluded player.ResultsPatients made significantly fewer ball tosses towards the excluded player during the compensation round compared to healthy controls (large effect size). Patients reported a significantly smaller increase in negative emotion after witnessing the exclusion and a significantly smaller decrease in negative emotion following the compensation round (large effect sizes). Patients also estimated a smaller decrease in negative emotion in the excluded player following the compensation round (medium effect size). There were no significant associations between these outcomes and eating disorder psychopathology in patients.ConclusionsCompared to healthy adolescents, adolescent patients with eating disorders demonstrated less prosocial compensatory behaviour towards a computerised victim of social exclusion. In addition, they reported flatter negative emotion in themselves in response to witnessing and compensating for exclusion, and in the excluded player following compensation. If these findings are replicated, interventions to target these difficulties might contribute to improvements in social functioning in this patient group.

Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic and associated governmental regulations have drastically changed the daily social lives of children, adolescents, and adults. Changes in the social context may particularly affect children who are in the transition to adolescents (henceforth referred to as early adolescents) as adolescence is a crucial period for peer interactions and development of independence and autonomy. Yet, the impact of the pandemic and associated governmental regulations on early adolescents' emotional well-being has yet to be clarified. In the current study, we explored daily fluctuations in mood in 54 early adolescents (M age = 11.07) during the first few months (April 2020-June 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the role of parents and peers on adolescents' mood variability was investigated. Adolescents rated their mood (i.e., happiness, anger, sadness, anxiety) and peer interactions once a day during four separate weeks across different weeks of containment measures in the Netherlands. Moreover, adolescents reported on their experienced attachment to parents and peers and internalizing problems during baseline and the final measurement, respectively. Results showed relatively stable levels of mood during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, individual differences in mood variability during the first assessment week were negatively associated with the experienced level of attachment to both parents and peers. Moreover, heightened levels of mood variability did not mediate the link between attachment and internalizing problems. Lastly, the quality of offline contact, but not online contact, was negatively related to adolescents' mood variability. Overall, this study suggests that mood of early adolescents did not heavily fluctuated across the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings add to the growing body of literature aiming to understand how adolescent's life are affected by the COVID-19 crisis and illustrates that social connectedness to parents or peers may facilitate resilience to distress and daily mood fluctuation in early adolescents.

Project description:ContextSocial anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyperreactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated.ObjectiveTo investigate behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli.DesignParticipants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience.SettingAcademic psychology department.ParticipantsFifteen adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically matched healthy controls.Main outcome measuresBlood oxygen level-dependent signal and negative emotion ratings.ResultsBehaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion- and attention-processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared with patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (ie, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) in patients compared with controls.ConclusionsCompared with controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation-related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder.

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Mood and emotional reactivity of adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: short-term and long-term effects and the impact of social and socioeconomic stressors.

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