COVID-19 in a vulnerable population: Results from the Study of Adolescent to Adult Neural Development

The problem:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers experienced a broad range of stressors. Some workers lost jobs due to the pandemic; others maintained their jobs, but lost working hours and income. Mitchell, Meier, Monk, and colleagues seek to understand how unemployment and loss of income affected the mental health and overall wellness of working-age individuals during the course of the pandemic.

The approach:

The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study is the longest-running national birth cohort study in the U.S. including about 5,000 births from 1998-2000 in large U.S. cities with an oversample of non-marital births. The Study of Adolescent to Adult Neural Development (SAND) provides additional data for a subsample of this group, primarily from several large Midwestern cities, with a focus on bringing together neuroscience and population science to study the effect of poverty-related stressors on brain development. SAND includes magnetic resonance imaging data, mental health assessment data, adversity and resilience measures, genetic and epigenetic data, and more for the subsample population.

The findings:

About one-third of the young adults and one-half of the caregivers in the SAND study were frontline workers— delivering packages, working in grocery stores, serving as caregivers and medical professionals, and more. However, while these essential workers were employed, many of them experienced reduced working hours and loss of income. Moreover, many experienced stressful working conditions and isolation during the pandemic due to fear of transmitting COVID to their loved ones. Many of the young adults and caregivers in the study lost income due to COVID, were unable to get work due to COVID, or lost their jobs altogether. And there were significant differences by race and household income.

While both young adults’ and primary caregivers’ anxiety and depression increased during COVID, young adults had higher stress scores and anxiety than primary caregivers. In the first year of the pandemic, there were no statistically significant differences between essential workers, non-essential workers, and the unemployed. A couple of years later, however, there were significant differences in depression for essential workers versus unemployed workers. Young adults who were essential workers, working during the pandemic, had much higher levels of depression than those who were unemployed. When the team controlled for depression and anxiety in the first year of the pandemic, income losses still had a significant effect on later depression.