Western Australian adolescent emotional wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020

Globally, the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) has impacted how communities interact, children are educated, and people live and work [1]. Within the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of the global school student population experienced some level of school closures [2]. In some countries, learning from home became the new norm for 2020, with significant commentary on the potential psychosocial impacts of this for young people, including the consequences of decreased social opportunities and potential for isolation and loneliness during long periods of time at home [3‐5]. Data from countries with high local transmission, such as Italy [6], the Netherlands [7] and Germany [8], show declines in quality of life for children and adolescents.

However, in high-transmission contexts, it is unclear whether this impact on quality of life is due to the limitations imposed by lockdown, or by more existential concerns. We examined wellbeing among adolescents in Western Australia in 2020, where low COVID-19 transmission and little intensive lockdown were experienced. As in other parts of the world with low COVID-19 prevalence, school closures in Western Australia were relatively brief (less than two weeks), and students spent the majority of 2020 attending school in person. Although impacts such as isolation were thus unlikely for young Western Australians, they may nonetheless have observed the broader impact of COVID-19 on others in the world, and experienced disruptions including altered parental work arrangements, less household income, increased uncertainty, and impacts on the mental health of adults in their lives [9, 10]. These factors have the potential to impact the psychosocial wellbeing of young people irrespective of local disease prevalence. A study of Australian adolescents using a convenience sample provided descriptive data on the perceived impact of COVID-19 on their mental health [11], but it is unclear if these findings reflect a deterioration of wellbeing against established pre-pandemic benchmarks. The current study provides a test of this possibility with a large sample of young people in Western Australia.

The first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Western Australia on February 21, 2020 (Fig. 1). In early March 2020, a 14 day quarantine was established for all overseas arrivals and by March 22, 2020, a ‘hard’ interstate border was introduced which remained in place until November 2020. New school learning arrangements for students were implemented on March 26, 2020, with families encouraged to keep their children learning from home. Cases of community-acquired COVID-19 dramatically declined to zero by mid-April. Schools re-opened for Term 2 on April 29, 2020 and on May 14, 2020, the Western Australian government announced all children must return to school by the week beginning May 18, 2020.

The first data collection (C1) for the current (“DETECT”) study was in June 2020, when all primary and secondary students were back at school and the State’s COVID-19 case load was reduced to few or no new cases/day, all of which were recorded in quarantined overseas travellers. Western Australia remained a region of low COVID-19 prevalence, with no local transmission after April 13, 2020, and a total of 979 cases and 9 deaths recorded throughout 2020. A second cross-sectional data collection (C2) was conducted in October 2020, after a sustained period free of COVID-19 community transmission, and progression of the state through the phases of a recovery plan. During this time there was continued high media coverage of the impact of the virus globally, including a 112 day lockdown in Melbourne located in Victoria, Australia.

Early in the pandemic, studies from other countries indicated that school closures and other pandemic events could be significantly impacting the wellbeing of children [12]. We aimed to determine whether, in a setting such as Western Australia where the impact of the pandemic in 2020 was limited compared to other global jurisdictions, there is evidence of possible significant psychological impact of COVID-19 in the face of very limited local threat. Although our cross-sectional data do not permit attributing causality to the impact of the pandemic, we have tested the hypothesis that even in the absence of high rates of COVID-19 locally, the wellbeing of adolescents in Western Australia would be lower than that noted at a benchmark assessment conducted in 2013/2014. Furthermore, by collecting two cycles of data during 2020, we have examined whether wellbeing shifted during the course of the pandemic.

We were also concerned to examine potential inequity in the wellbeing of young people. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people have been found to be at elevated risk of emotional distress and poor mental health outcomes [13‐15]. Rates of depression and other mental disorders amongst children and adolescents have been found to be elevated in rural and regional areas of Australia [16], in particular in outer regional areas [17]. We also examined whether students whose families spoke a language other than English at home were at differential risk for poor wellbeing than other students, as has been found for Australian parents during the COVID-19 pandemic [18].

Finally, we examined several potential risk and protective factors for wellbeing, including the peer context and the school context. Based on prior research (e.g., [19‐21], we hypothesized that students with a greater number of friends and those who reported greater quality of friendships would report greater wellbeing, and students who felt more connected to their school would also report greater wellbeing.

Among the many concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic is the risk that such an unprecedented global event might affect the wellbeing of children and young people. We report higher levels of difficulty and distress during the pandemic in Western Australian adolescents than previously documented, even though rates of COVID-19 remained low in Western Australia throughout 2020. Although the study design does not permit a causal conclusion, the increase—from 14.4% of respondents scoring above the threshold in 2013/2014 to 39% by October 2020 – is well beyond the standard error of prevalence estimates typically produced in epidemiological studies of populations. This magnitude of change is in stark contrast with reports of little change in the estimated prevalence of more severe mental disorders in Australian 6–17 year-olds between 1998 and 2014 [30].

As the last dataset for comparison was collected six years prior, the marked increase in difficulties and distress in 2020 could reflect a broader societal shift in adolescent wellbeing not entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, other Western Australian data show a 50% increase from 2015 to 2019 in the number of children aged 0–17 years referred to the Western Australia Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service [31]. The Mission Australia Youth Survey has found growing rates of emotional distress, from 18.6% of their respondents in 2012 to 27.0% in 2019, prior to the pandemic, with comparable gender differences indicating girls are more distressed than boys, as was found here [13]. However, in light of post-COVID-19 studies from other countries [6‐8] and findings such as a 104% increase during 2020 in Western Australian children with anorexia nervosa requiring admission to the hospital compared to the previous three years [32], it seems plausible that the global pandemic has played a role in the 2.7-fold increase in prevalence of adolescent difficulties and distress found in this study.

The possibility that the pandemic played a role in this marked difference in wellbeing is further supported by the significant increase in difficulties and distress at Cycle 2, collected 7–8 months after the first COVID-19 cases in Western Australia. This might indicate that the ongoing unresolved global nature of the pandemic was still exerting an influence on adolescent wellbeing. Although causal inference cannot be drawn due to the design of the study, there are research precedents to support interpretation that the events associated with COVID-19, even in a setting such as Western Australia with relatively few cases, could reasonably have contributed to the elevated adolescent difficulties and distress. For example, research arising after the 9/11 terrorist attacks illustrated that such historical events may affect the mental health and wellbeing of young people who were not directly affected by the attack [33]. Experimental psychologists have found that tasks that entail reflecting on existential threats can increase negative affect [34], and from a stress and coping perspective (e.g., [35]) a global pandemic constitutes an uncontrollable and dangerous stressor providing no recourse for problem-focused coping. Exposure to media reports and awareness of the global and uncontrollable nature of the pandemic may be sufficient to imperil wellbeing.

Another possible reason for the increase in difficulties and distress since the 2013/2014 benchmark may be a shift in willingness to talk about one’s emotional struggles. Australia has seen a notable increase in public health messaging regarding mental health; for example, the R U OK initiative [36] has increased awareness of this issue. Following an unprecedented decade of de-stigmatisation and promotion of mental health and seeking mental health care, the pandemic may have catalysed a further broad discussion of mental health, potentially ameliorating some of the stigma associated with speaking openly about emotional wellbeing and thereby increasing the likelihood that a young person feels comfortable divulging if they are experiencing difficulties.

The findings reveal that about 39% of students are reporting at least moderate to high levels of difficulties and emotional distress. They reported being tired, having trouble sleeping and being annoyed, and higher proportions of them also said they were sad and worried. While the study is not designed to test whether the pandemic is responsible, or the degree to which it is, these difficulties have a high valence against the circumstances confronting young people and the uncertainty of future outcomes.

Although this study can neither definitively attribute the increased difficulties and distress to the pandemic, nor draw conclusions about resilience in the face of the crisis, it did examine predictors of difficulties. Gender and grade level were both associated with wellbeing outcomes, with female students and those in older Grade levels more likely to present with elevated difficulties and distress than their counterparts. These associations observed during the pandemic are consistent with wellbeing predictors reported in 2013/2014 [37]. Older students were contending with exit examinations, university entrance and significant social events such as school formals being interrupted or cancelled at the time of the study. Further to this, greater capacities for abstract cognition may enable older students to be more conscious of the potential for a global pandemic to adversely affect their lives; while younger students may be more circumscribed about the impact of the pandemic on their lives, and more influenced by concrete aspects of their lives, such as being permitted to return to ‘normal’ schooling. The quality and quantity of friendships and a sense of connectedness with the school community were consistently associated with lower risk of difficulties and distress, as has been established in past research for more acute mental health and wellbeing risk factors [19, 38].

Our data—collected rapidly from a large and broadly representative cohort of public-school students at a time when insight into how children and young people were tracking was critical—provide insight into the current state of adolescent wellbeing in a low prevalence setting where some of the most obvious negative impacts of COVID-19 (i.e., high local infection or death rates; limitations to personal freedoms for long periods) were not directly present in the local community. The picture is not good. Whether due to the pandemic, to other secular changes, or – most likely – to the convergence of the two, these findings represent a major public health concern, that warrants an urgent response.

Our findings were only made possible through the use of passive/opt-out parental consent [41] and demonstrate that this form of data collection is feasible even in a time of significant resource scarcity and competing priorities. These findings highlight the need for more robust systematic monitoring of adolescent wellbeing and mental health to track changes over time, and to provide a benchmark against which future studies and interventions can be evaluated; including the evidence-based community capacity building and intervention implementation required to address the significant wellbeing needs of communities during this challenging new era.

This knowledge could be utilised to deliver equity by allocating limited resources more precisely to support the types of prevention and response that may be the most appropriate based on students’ needs, and to assess the effectiveness and return on investment of these policies and practices over time. Regional inequities observed in our data are an ongoing challenge for Australia, a very large continent in area and a relatively small population, leading to extreme remote conditions unfound in most nations of the world. For many regional communities, lower levels of health service use result in reduced access to service [42]. This tyranny of distance disproportionately affects Australia’s first peoples, who make up a larger proportion of Australia’s regional and remote populations, compared to urban areas [43]. Schools provide a hub for engaging regional and remote families, and consultation and active engagement with Aboriginal Elders and other key stakeholders toward in-depth research to support regional and remote students is needed.

System-level wellbeing prevalence data could also inform and support whole-school wellbeing planning, staff training and resource allocation for tailored, school-level evidence-based prevention, early detection and treatment policies and practices. Ultimately, this will guide government resource prioritisation, decision making and action to reduce the high rates of mental health problems in our communities.