Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Psychosocial well-being before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide study of more than half a million Norwegian adolescents

Nature Mental Health volume 1, pages 501–513 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has had adverse effects on adolescent psychosocial well-being, but little is known as to whether these changes persisted after pandemic-related restrictions were lifted. Addressing this issue, we examined whether declines in well-being remained after the pandemic and whether adverse changes during and after the pandemic varied according to parental socioeconomic status and adolescents’ sex and age. We used data from more than 500,000 Norwegian adolescents, assessed annually between 2014 and 2022. Multilevel analyses showed that after Norway lifted all restrictions, adolescents reported lower satisfaction with peer relationships and less-optimistic future life expectations, but less loneliness compared with long-term trends. Moderation analyses revealed that girls, younger adolescents and adolescents from poor families and with low parental education suffered more adverse changes both during and after the pandemic across several domains. These findings indicate a need for policy interventions targeting social inequalities in adolescent well-being.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Societal growth-curve trajectories of adolescent well-being in nine different domains from 2014 to 2022 and estimated effects of the pandemic in 2021 and 2022.
Fig. 2: Estimated effects of the pandemic in 2021 and 2022 according to parental education and perceived family poverty.
Fig. 3: Estimated effects of the pandemic in 2021 and 2022 according to sex and age.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study can be obtained from Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), but restrictions apply to their availability. Parts of the data are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD3007-V3. The whole dataset used in this study is not publicly accessible and was used under license for the current study. However, it is available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author and with permission of the owner of the dataset, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA).

Code availability

The code for all analyses reported in the manuscript is available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/62FAH.

References

  1. von Soest, T. et al. Adolescents’ psychosocial well-being one year after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway. Nat. Hum. Behav. 6, 217–228 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Thorisdottir, I. E. et al. Depressive symptoms, mental wellbeing, and substance use among adolescents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iceland: a longitudinal, population-based study. Lancet Psychiatry 8, 663–672 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Barendse, M. E. A. et al. Longitudinal change in adolescent depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. J. Res. Adolesc. 33, 74–91 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Racine, N. et al. Global prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents during COVID-19: A meta-analysis. JAMA Pediatr. 175, 1142–1150 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Zolopa, C. et al. Changes in youth mental health, psychological wellbeing, and substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic: a rapid review. Adolesc. Res. Rev. 7, 161–177 (2022).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Hu, Y. & Qian, Y. COVID-19 and adolescent mental health in the United Kingdom. J. Adolesc. Health 69, 26–32 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Halldorsdottir, T. et al. Adolescent well-being amid the COVID-19 pandemic: are girls struggling more than boys? JCCP Adv. 1, e12027 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Oreopoulos, P., von Wachter, T. & Heisz, A. The short- and long-term career effects of graduating in a recession. Am. Econ. J. Appl. Econ. 4, 1–29 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Liu, K., Salvanes, K. G. & Sørensen, E. Ø. Good skills in bad times: cyclical skill mismatch and the long-term effects of graduating in a recession. Eur. Econ. Rev. 84, 3–17 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Cutler, D. M., Huang, W. & Lleras-Muney, A. When does education matter? The protective effect of education for cohorts graduating in bad times. Soc. Sci. Med. 127, 63–73 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Bell, B., Bindler, A. & Machin, S. Crime scars: recessions and the making of career criminals. Rev. Econ. Stat. 100, 392–404 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Arthi, V. & Parman, J. Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19. Explor. Econ. Hist. 79, 101381 (2021). Article no.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Fuchs-Schündeln, N., Krueger, D., Ludwig, A. & Popova, I. The long-term distributional and welfare effects of COVID-19 school closures. Econ. J. 132, 1647–1683 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Prime, H., Wade, M. & Browne, D. T. Risk and resilience in family well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Am. Psychol. 75, 631–643 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Stevens, G. W. J. M. et al. Examining socioeconomic disparities in changes in adolescent mental health before and during different phases of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Stress Health 39, 169–181 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Rogers, A. A., Ha, T. & Ockey, S. Adolescents' perceived socio-emotional impact of COVID-19 and implications for mental health: results from a US-based mixed-methods study. J. Adolesc. Health 68, 43–52 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Layman, H. M. et al. Substance use among youth during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review. Curr. Psychiatry Rep. 24, 307–324 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  18. Kharel, M. et al. Impact of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on movement behaviours of children and adolescents: a systematic review. BMJ Glob. Health 7, e007190 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. ten Velde, G. et al. Physical activity behaviour and screen time in Dutch children during the COVID-19 pandemic: pre-, during- and post-school closures. Pediatr. Obes. 16, e12779 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  20. Heggebø, K., Tøge, A. G., Dahl, E. & Berg, J. E. Socioeconomic inequalities in health during the Great Recession: a scoping review of the research literature. Scand. J. Public Health 47, 635–654 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Perry, B. L., Aronson, B. & Pescosolido, B. A. Pandemic precarity: COVID-19 is exposing and exacerbating inequalities in the American heartland. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118, e2020685118 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  22. Blundell, R. et al. Inequality and the COVID-19 crisis in the United Kingdom. Annu. Rev. Econ. 14, 607–636 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Cross, K., Evans, J., MacLeavy, J. & Manley, D. Analysing the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19: a new regional geography or pandemic enhanced inequalities? Reg. Stud. Reg. Sci. 9, 461–485 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  24. The Infection Control Measures Are Being Removed on Saturday 12 February (Office of the Norwegian Prime Minister, 2022); https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/the-infection-control-measures-are-being-removed-on-saturday-12-february/id2900873/

  25. Cosma, A. et al. Cross-national time trends in adolescent mental well-being from 2002 to 2018 and the explanatorry role of schoolwork pressure. J. Adolesc. Health 66, S50–S58 (2020).

  26. The ESPAD Group ESPAD Report 2019—Results from the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2020).

  27. Guthold, R., Stevens, G. A., Riley, L. M. & Bull, F. C. Global trends in insufficient physical activity among adolescents: a pooled analysis of 298 population-based surveys with 1.6 million participants. Lancet Child. Adolesc. Health 4, 23–35 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  28. Schwaba, T., Robins, R. W., Sanghavi, P. H. & Bleidorn, W. Optimism development across adulthood and associations with positive and negative life events. Soc. Psychol. Pers. Sci. 10, 1092–1101 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Chopik, W. J. et al. Changes in optimism and pessimism in response to life events: evidence from three large panel studies. J. Res. Pers. 88, 103985 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  30. Mens, M. G., Scheier, M. F. & Carver, C. S. In The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology (eds Snyder, C. R. et al.) 396–412 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021).

  31. Johnson, S. R. L., Blum, R. W. & Cheng, T. L. Future orientation: a construct with implications for adolescent health and wellbeing. Int. J. Adolesc. Med. Health 26, 459–468 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Ulset, V. S. & von Soest, T. Posttraumatic growth during the COVID-19 lockdown: a large-scale population-based study among Norwegian adolescents. J. Trauma. Stress 35, 941–954 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  33. Gillham, J. E., Shatté, A. J., Reivich, K. J. & Seligman, M. E. P. in Optimism & Pessimism: Implications for Theory, Research, and Practice (ed. Chang, E. C.) 53–75 (American Psychological Association, 2001).

  34. Cummins, R. A., Eckersley, R., Pallant, J., van Vugt, J. & Misajon, R. Developing a national index of subjective wellbeing: the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index. Soc. Indic. Res. 64, 159–190 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being (OECD, 2013).

  36. Kandel, D. B. & Davies, M. Epidemiology of depressive mood in adolescents. An empirical study. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 39, 1205–1212 (1982).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  37. Derogatis, L. R., Lipman, R. S., Rickels, K., Uhlenhuth, E. H. & Covi, L. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL): a self-report symptom inventory. Behav. Sci. 19, 1–15 (1974).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  38. Nicolaisen, M. & Thorsen, K. Impairments, mastery, and loneliness. A prospective study of loneliness among older adults. Norweg. J. Epidemiol 22, 143–150 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  39. Johnson, T. P. & VanGeest, J. B. In Research Methods in the Study of Substance Abuse (eds VanGeest, J. B. et al.) 251–283 (Springer, 2017).

  40. Barnea, Z., Rahav, G. & Teichman, M. The reliability and consistence of self-reports on substance use in a longitudinal study. Br. J. Addict. 82, 891–898 (1987).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  41. Brodersen, N. H., Steptoe, A., Williamson, S. & Wardle, J. Sociodemographic, developmental, environmental, and psychological correlates of physical activity and sedentary behavior at age 11 to 12. Ann. Behav. Med. 29, 2–11 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Gunnell, K. E., Brunet, J. & Bélanger, M. Out with the old, in with the new: assessing change in screen time when measurement changes over time. Prev. Med. Rep. 9, 37–41 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. DeGagne, B. & Busseri, M. A. The impact of better- versus worse-than-average comparisons on beliefs about how life satisfaction is unfolding over time, affect, and motivation. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 51, 610–626 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Lang, F. R., Weiss, D., Gerstorf, D. & Wagner, G. G. Forecasting life satisfaction across adulthood: benefits of seeing a dark future? Psychol. Aging 28, 249–261 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  45. Cohen, P., Cohen, J., Aiken, L. S. & West, S. G. The problem of units and the circumstance for POMP. Multivar. Behav. Res. 34, 315–346 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Fairbrother, M. Two multilevel modeling techniques for analyzing comparative longitudinal survey datasets. Polit. Sci. Res. Meth. 2, 119–140 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Meuleman, B., Davidov, E. & Billiet, J. Modeling multiple-country repeated cross-sections. A societal growth curve model for studying the effect of the economic crisis on perceived ethnic threat. Meth. Data Anal. 12, 185–210 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Schmidt-Catran, A. W. & Fairbrother, M. The random effects in multilevel models: getting them wrong and getting them right. Eur. Sociol. Rev. 32, 23–38 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Snijders, T. & Bosker, R. Multilevel Analysis. An Introduction to Basic and Advanced Mutilevel Modeling 2nd edn (Sage, 2012).

  50. Brambor, T., Clark, W. R. & Golder, M. Understanding interaction models: improving empirical analyses. Polit. Anal. 14, 63–82 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Enders, C. K. & Tofighi, D. Centering predictor variables in cross-sectional multilevel models: a new look at an old issue. Psychol. Meth. 12, 121–138 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. J. Stat. Softw. 67, 1–48 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Solt, F. & Hu, Y. Interplot: plot the effects of variables in interaction terms. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=interplot (2015).

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research has been funded by three grants from the Research Council of Norway (# 288083, 300816 and 301010).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. PROMENTA Research Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Michal Kozák & Tilmann von Soest

  2. Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

    Anders Bakken & Tilmann von Soest

Authors
  1. Michal Kozák
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Anders Bakken
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Tilmann von Soest
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.K. and T.v.S. jointly conceptualized the study and drafted the manuscript. M.K. prepared the data and conducted all statistical analyses. A.B. was in charge of the data collection in Ungdata and contributed to writing the manuscript. T.v.S. created the figures. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michal Kozák.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Mental Health thanks Ezra Susser, Suhaila Ghuloum and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Fig. 1 and Tables 1–16.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kozák, M., Bakken, A. & von Soest, T. Psychosocial well-being before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide study of more than half a million Norwegian adolescents. Nat. Mental Health 1, 501–513 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00088-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00088-y

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing