Search

During adolescence, individuals become highly sensitive to social cues from their peers. Being accepted by their peers and avoiding rejection has been shown to be more important to adolescents than any other age group. Excessive sensitivity to social rejection, however, has been proposed as a social risk factor for emotional disorders. The proposed study aims to explore the mechanistic role of social rejection sensitivity in adolescent emotional disorders, in particular, depression. Theoretical models of the role of social rejection sensitivity in adolescent emotional disorders have proposed that it is expressed in a negative interpretation of ambiguous social situations (Allen & Badcock, 2003) and related to experiences of a rejecting parenting style (Rowe et al., 2015). The present study aims to explore the theorised associations and age-related differences in the associations from adolescence to adulthood.

The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has led to the implementation of physical distancing strategies by governments aiming to reduce rates of infection (Warren et al., 2021). Amongst the most extreme physical distancing measures were lockdowns which restricted people to their homes except for essential activities (Haider et al., 2020; Verma et al., 2020). At the same time, a global mental health crisis has ensued with an estimated increase of major depressive and anxiety disorders by 25% (Santomauro et al., 2021). Indeed, several studies have now reported higher symptoms of depression and anxiety relative to pre-pandemic levels (Pierce et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2022). Lockdowns represent a key potential contributor to these observed increases in mental health problems globally during the pandemic. Meta-analyses have supported this proposal, highlighting increases in depression and anxiety symptoms for those in lockdown compared to out of lockdown (Prati & Mancini, 2021; Knox et al., 2022). However, these analyses have found inconsistent effects between studies, which have been limited by narrow data collection timeframes without repeated assessments. In the present study, we will address this by comparing mental health changes during the first year of the pandemic at varying stages of lockdown and conduct analyses to isolate specific symptoms which may be driving these changes. One potential mechanism linking lockdowns to adverse mental health outcomes is the experience of loneliness. This is relevant during lockdowns, as the restrictions placed upon in-person social interactions may lead to feelings of lacking companionship, a known characteristic of loneliness (Saltzman et al., 2020). Further, loneliness has been implicated in mental health as a bi-directional risk factor for depression and anxiety (Groarke et al., 2020; Park et al., 2020). The present study aims to explore the relationship between loneliness and symptoms of depression and anxiety across COVID-19 lockdowns.

Several definitions of boredom exist, but common among them are that it represents a negative experience towards an activity, or lack of, and a distortion in time perception (Greenson, 1953; Geiwitz, 1966; Eastwood et al, 2012). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing measures and lockdowns imposed by governments world-wide may have potentially contributed to increased rates of boredom. Boredom has previously been associated with mental health difficulties, such as depression, which have also risen during the course of the pandemic (Pierce et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2022). Therefore, in the current study we set out to understand if pandemic induced boredom is associated with mental health problems across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to what extent this varies by age.

Globally, COVID-19 has resulted in increases in mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety (Huang & Zhao, 2020; Mazza et al., 2020; Newby et al., 2020), especially in young people (Racine et al., 2021). The current studies will examine cognitive risk/resilience factors that may play a role in age-related differences in mental health outcomes during the pandemic. The first study will investigate the harmful impact of intolerance of uncertainty on mental health and the protective effect of psychological flexibility, both cross-sectionally and across time. Based on existing cross-sectional findings we will also explore whether changes in psychological flexibility over time mediate the association between T1 intolerance of uncertainty and mental health problems at T3. In the second study, we will examine affective control as a proposed cognitive substrate of psychological flexibility. Age-related differences in affective control have been observed suggesting that affective control develops throughout adolescence. Longitudinal evidence further suggests a harmful effect of long-term stress and social isolation on affective control. We will therefore examine age-related differences in affective control, changes in affective control over time as well as whether affective control partially accounts for the association between the risk/resilience factors tested in study 1 and mental health. And finally, whether this varies as a function of age group. To investigate these cognitive risk/resilience factors, the COVID-19 Risks Across the Lifespan (CORAL) dataset will be used. Age differences will be examined by grouping participants into the following age bins: early-to-mid adolescents (11–17 years), emerging adults (18–24 years), adults (25–64 years), and older adults (65+ years).

During the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a rise in common mental health problems (i.e., depression and anxiety) compared to pre-pandemic levels, especially in young people (for a review see Racine et al., 2021). Understanding the factors that place young people at risk is critical to guide the response to increased mental health problems. Here we examine the potential role of affect and emotion regulatory processes. Capacity to regulate affect is still developing during adolescence, with research typically observing an increase in the use of adaptive strategies and decrease in use of maladaptive strategies with age (Ahmed et al., 2015). More recently, the importance of context in emotion regulation has been recognised, with researchers arguing that the shifting nature of contextual demands has a key influence on the efficacy of regulatory strategies and whether such strategies lead to beneficial or deleterious effects (Aldao, 2013; Bonanno & Burton, 2013). Similarly, Silvers & Guassi Moreira (2019) distinguish between one’s emotion regulatory capacity and tendency, noting that the capacity to implement a certain strategy does not always align with a tendency to use said strategy. The tendency to use emotion regulation strategies and the capacity to flexibly implement strategies dependent on one’s context, then, may separately influence mental health outcomes. The extent to which emotion regulatory processes have protected against or contributed to the heightened mental health problems observed in young people during the pandemic, however, remains little explored. It is possible that the heightened stress associated with the pandemic may have elicited higher levels of negative affectivity in young people compared to adults, in the context of still-developing emotion regulatory processes. In the current study we test this hypothesis using data from the COVID Risks Across the Lifespan (CORAL) study. In CORAL participants completed an online survey thrice at three-month-intervals. We will investigate age-related differences in the relationship between emotion regulatory processes (i.e., mental flexibility, habitual use of various emotion regulation strategies, and trait worry), and changes in negative and positive affect during the pandemic, with mental health problems.

Since the pandemic, there has been an increasing demand for mental health services worldwide, with over 60% of countries reporting disruptions to mental health services for vulnerable people, including women requiring perinatal services (World Health Organization, 2020). However, little is known about the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women and the impact on their mental health. One source of distress to pregnant women may be the unpredictable nature of COVID-19, which has brought about social, economic, and global health uncertainties. Research investigating the effects of psychological distress on maternal mental health, has shown that pregnant women who experience adversity during the peripartum period are at high risk for postpartum mental health problems. For instance, worry (Szeleky et al., 2020), excessive stress (O’Donnell et al., 2014), antenatal anxiety (Dennis et al., 2017), and antenatal depression (Biaggi et al., 2016) are key risk factors associated with postpartum mental health problems in pregnant women. Studies have also shown that elevated loneliness during pregnancy is associated with greater depressive symptoms (Junttila et al., 2015). Social isolation, lack of social support, and a heightened sense of loneliness during the pandemic may have a detrimental impact on the wellbeing of pregnant women. Poor maternal mental health is in turn associated with increases in offspring’s risk for mental health problems and impairments in child development. Understanding how social and cognitive risk factors affect pregnant women’s mental health may help to inform policies and interventions that protect their wellbeing during these uncertain times. The current study aims to examine the association between COVID-19 related stress and mental health, in pregnant and non-pregnant women. We investigate the impact of cognitive (intolerance of uncertainty and worry) and social (social support, changes in social interactions, and loneliness) risk factors in mediating this association. Further, we explore whether pregnant women, compared to non-pregnant women, are more vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 related stress.

2020 saw the world gripped by a global pandemic. It has shaped the way we lead our lives, especially our social interactions; the impact of which has been proposed to be especially detrimental to adolescents (10-24 years; Sawyer et al., 2019). Adolescence is a period of extensive social transformation, marked by a reorientation away from family and towards peers and the development of more complex and hierarchical peer relationships (Blakemore & Mills, 2014; Burnett & Blakemore, 2009; Kilford et al., 2016). Adolescents also appear to be hypersensitive to social exclusion (Blakemore & Mills, 2014) with research showing that social exclusion has a greater negative impact on adolescents’ mood, compared to adults (Sebastian et al., 2010; Foulkes & Blakemore, 2019). Given the social sensitivity that is characteristic of adolescence as well as the increased need for peer interaction (Orben et al., 2020), it is likely that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting government policies in response to the pandemic, including social distancing, may have had a greater negative impact on adolescents, compared to their adult counterparts. The deprivation of face-to-face social contact throughout the pandemic may also be particularly detrimental for individuals who are high in social rejection sensitivity, a known risk factor for poor mental health (Gao, 2017). The present study aims to explore the relationship between age, social rejection sensitivity, social connectedness and mental health in the context of COVID-19 social distancing.

Background: Adolescence is a sensitive period for the onset of mental health disorders. Effective, easy-to-disseminate, scalable prevention and early interventions are urgently needed. Affective control has been proposed as a potential target mechanism. Training affective control has been shown to reduce mental health symptoms and improve emotion regulation. However, uptake and adherence to such training by adolescents has been low. Thus, the current study aims to receive end user (i.e., adolescents) feedback on a prototype of a novel app-based gamified affective control training program, the Social Brain Train. Methods: The proposed study aims to recruit participants aged 13-16 years old (N = 20) to provide user feedback on the Social Brain Train app. The first group of participants (n = 5) will complete an online questionnaire assessing demographics, symptoms of depression and anxiety, social rejection sensitivity and attitudes toward the malleability of cognition and mental health. They will complete two tasks assessing cognitive capacity and interpretation bias. Participants will be then be invited to an online group workshop, where they will be introduced to the app. They will train on the app for three days, and following app usage, participants will complete the aforementioned measures again, as well as provide ratings on app content, and complete a semi-structured interview to obtain in-depth user feedback, which will be used to inform modifications to the app. Following these modifications, a second group of participants (n = 15) will follow the same procedure, except they will train on the app for 14 days. Feedback from both groups of participants will be used to inform the final design. Conclusions: By including young people in the design of the Social Brain Train app, the proposed study will help us to develop a novel mental health intervention that young people find engaging, acceptable, and easy-to-use

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a large impact on the lives of many people around the world. COVID-19 is a global health crisis that has already caused more than 50 million confirmed cases and has been implicated in over one million deaths (World Health Organization, 2020). Many countries around the world have imposed extraordinary strategies to control the rapid spread of the virus, such as national lockdowns, physical distancing measures and quarantines (Rettie & Daniels, 2020). The pandemic and these related public health measures have led to the experience of profound uncertainty for many. For example, there is widespread uncertainty as to when the pandemic will be under control, when local and international travel will resume to the same level as seen pre-pandemic and when there will be effective vaccines rolled out across the globe. Pre-pandemic work has shown that individuals vary in the extent to which they can tolerate uncertainty (Carleton et al., 2012; McEvoy et al., 2019). Here we aim to examine to what extent individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty are associated with variations in mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of recent studies have focused on mental health problems during COVID-19, with the most frequently reported symptoms being depression and anxiety (Holmes et al., 2020; Parola et al., 2020). Previous work has demonstrated that during the COVID-19 pandemic people with high levels of intolerance of uncertainty are more likely to endorse depressive symptoms, (Voitsidis et al., 2020). Whilst some studies have examined the association between intolerance of uncertainty and depression and anxiety, pre-and during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been limited research investigating the extent to which intolerance of uncertainty may impact the relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms (Wang, Hu, Feng, Wilson & Chen, 2020). Depression and anxiety often co-occur, with co-morbid depression and anxiety resulting in more severe and chronic mental health problems. Therefore, it is important to better understand the interaction between depression and anxiety symptoms during the pandemic (Wang, Hu, Feng, Wilson, & Chen, 2020). The present study will examine the extent to which intolerance of uncertainty relates to and alters the relationship between anxiety and depression symptoms among individuals from different countries, across the course of the first year of the pandemic. In particular, this study will employ a network analytic approach to investigate whether different levels of intolerance of uncertainty impact the connectedness of psychological symptom networks (of anxiety and depression) and how these networks vary across time (Time 1: from May 5, 2020, through September 5, 2020; Time 2: from August 5, 2020, to January 31, 2021; Time 3: from November 5, 2020, to March 30, 2021) and by country (US, UK & Australia). The rationale for including data from different countries, specifically the US, UK & Australia is to include environments characterized by different levels of uncertainty both due to COVID-19 related risk and government mandated regulations to curb the transmission of COVID-19 (i.e., stringency index; for details see: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-government-stringency-index).

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a rise in common mental health problems compared to pre-pandemic levels, especially in young people. Understanding the factors that place young people at risk is critical to guide the response to increased mental health problems. Here we examine whether age-related differences in mental flexibility and frequency of use of emotion regulation strategies partially account for the higher levels of negative affectivity, reduced positive affectivity, and increased mental health problems reported by younger relative to older people during the pandemic.Method: Participants (N=2,367; 89.95% female, 11-100 years) from Australia, UK, and USA were surveyed thrice at three-month intervals during the first year of the pandemic (May 2020–April 2021). Participants completed measures of frequency of use of emotion regulation strategies, mental flexibility, negative and positive affect, and mental health problems. Results: Younger age was associated with less positive (b =0.008, p