Poster #117 - School modality moderates the effect of COVID worry on depression among rural adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Early adolescence (11-14 years old) is an important developmental period associated with the onset of many mental health symptoms (Lee et al., 2014). The COVID-19 Pandemic is associated with uncertainty, repeated school closures, and a loss of face-to-face peer contact (Branquinho et al., 2020). The COIVD-19 pandemic has put adolescents at greater risk for depressive symptoms (Barendse et al., 2022). Further, although risk perception for COVID-19 is sometimes positively related to poor mental health (Moore et al., 2022; Xin et al., 2022), it is possible that this is only true for some students and may depend on a variety of other factors. For example, recent work suggests that online-only schooling poorly impacted adolescent mental health during the pandemic (Hertz et al., 2021). The current study investigated if school modality moderates the association between COVID-19 risk perception and depression.
Participants were 283 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students (51% self-identified females; 45.6% Black) recruited from rural communities in the Southeastern United States. As part of a larger project, they completed online surveys, for which they were paid $20. Adolescents completed measures of COVID-worry and depression and reported on their race and ethnicity how they were attending school.
Preliminary t-tests indicated that girls reported more depression than boys and that Black adolescents reported less depression than adolescents who did not identify as Black. Mplus version 8.6 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2012) was used to examine structural models of how demographics and Covid concerns were related to depression and multi-group SEM models were used to compare if variables were similarly or differentially related to outcomes based on whether children were in-school solely online or attended school, at least part-time, in-person. The initial model with all paths unconstrained fit the model well, χ2 (6) = 22.645, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .00. Paths were constrained one by one to see if model fit declined significantly. The only path that could not be constrained without sacrificing model fit was the path from covid concerns to depression symptoms. Unconstraining this path revealed that Covid concerns were negatively related to depression for youth who were completing school online at the time but were not related to depression for youth in school at least part-time. The final model demonstrated good fit, χ2 (2) = .572, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .00, SRMR = .013.
Findings suggest that youth who were at home for school yet perceived there to be little risk in the COVID-19 pandemic reported more depression symptoms than youth who were home but perceived there to be more COVID risk. We interpret these findings through a lens of cognitive dissonance; if youth could cognitively justify school from home they were less likely suffer negative consequences to their mental health.

Group Authors

Alabama Rural Families Wellbeing Group

Authors

• Stephanie Masters, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Presenting Author

• Kristina Lynne McDonald, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

• Laura Hopson, University of Alabama