Economic expectations and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: a one-year longitudinal evaluation on Italian university students

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced an extensive aggravation of people’s anxiety level. Different policies aimed at fighting the spread of the virus could affect anxiety in various ways. We built an ad hoc web-based survey, administered to the student population of three Italian universities at the beginning of the pandemic and at one year’s distance, to collect information on retrospective and current anxiety levels and the underlining reasons. The survey also included questions concerning sociodemographic, economic, labor, lifestyle, academic career, and on-line teaching features, which prevents students from identifying the main survey topic to be anxiety. This research aims at assessing the change in anxiety levels between the analyzed periods and the main determinants of such change, focusing on students’ economic expectancies. Results from a Poisson regression model show that anxiety has increased compared to both the pre-pandemic level and the one quantified during the first lockdown. This increase is revealed to be mostly driven by economic and career-related uncertainties, rather than by job loss and proximity to COVID-19. Thus, policymakers should take action to provide certainties both in terms of economic prospects and reopening strategies, especially to avoid that the resulting increase in anxiety translates into an amplified suicide risk.

Remote Working and Home Learning: How the Italian Academic Population Dealt with Changes Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown

“…Previous studies showed the negative effects of forced lockdown (meaning restrictions on mobility, movement, and relationships) during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: isolation and lockdown have increased levels of depression and anxiety in both the whole population [64] and among students [19,[65][66][67].…”

Eudaimonic Well-Being of Italian Young Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Psychological Inflexibility and Fear of Death

“…This strategy was held from November 2020 until the end of the sanitary emergency, declared on March 31st, 2022, over two years later. During this time, Busetta et al [15] registered increased anxiety levels among Italian university students when comparing the measures collected during the first lockdown (March 2020) and those obtained one year later, between March and April 2021. These findings can also be linked to the uncertainty and ambiguity induced by the Italian prolonged region-specific restrictions [15,18].…”

“…Focusing on these phases may be particularly relevant to the Italian population, considering the restrictions implemented in Italy to face the consecutive waves of Covid-19 contagion. Unlike other countries that employed longer permanent closing strategies, the Italian government adopted the alternation of opening and closing regionally administered measures [15]. This strategy was held from November 2020 until the end of the sanitary emergency, declared on March 31st, 2022, over two years later.…”

Predictors of resilience of university students to educational stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study in Germany.

“…However, relevant conclusions for students can be drawn not only for Germany but also for other countries as well. Scholars from Europe (Busetta et al, 2022; Oliveira Carvalho et al, 2021; Owens et al, 2022), Asia (Shiratori et al, 2022; Zhang et al, 2021), and the United States (Okado et al, 2021; von Keyserlingk et al, 2022) have emphasized the pandemic’s negative effects on students’ mental health.…”