[Mental Health and Social Media Use of Adolescents and Young Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic]. / Psychische Gesundheit und Social Media- Nutzungsverhalten von Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen während der COVID-19-Pandemie.

Social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health of youth. We analyzed a sample of 274 adolescents and young adults that participated in an online survey. We used the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI 18) and the Perceived Stress Scale to assess mental health status. Furthermore, we assessed the frequency and intensity of social media use in all participants. More than 50 % of the adolescents and young adults reported clinically relevant scores for somatization, depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. Females had significantly higher mental health burdens than males. Although adolescents used social media more frequently and intensely than young adults, the results showed no correlation with psychopathology. Young adults had significantly higher scores compared to adolescents in somatization, depression, and perceived stress the more time they spent on social media. Our results emphasise that frequency and intensity of social media use alone were not associated with worsemental health.However, the adverse effects of socialmedia use have to be considered carefully.

Conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 guideline adherence in adolescent psychiatric outpatients: the predictive role of adverse childhood experiences.

BACKGROUND: Conspiracy beliefs have become widespread throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies have shown that endorsing conspiracy beliefs leads to lower protective guideline adherence (i.e., wearing face masks), posing a threat to public health measures. The current study expands this research across the lifespan, i.e., in a sample of adolescents with mental health problems. Here, we investigated the association between conspiracy beliefs and guideline adherence while also exploring the predictors of conspiracy beliefs. METHODS: N = 93 adolescent psychiatric outpatients (57% female, mean age: 15.8) were assessed using anonymous paper-pencil questionnaires. Endorsement of generic and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs was assessed, in addition to items measuring adherence to protective guidelines and mental health (stress, depressive symptoms, emotional/behavioral problems, and adverse childhood experiences). Multiple regressions and supervised machine learning (conditional random forests) were used for analyses. RESULTS: Fourteen percent of our sample fully endorsed at least one COVID-19 conspiracy theory, while protective guidelines adherence was relatively high (M = 4.92, on a scale from 1 to 7). The endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs-but not of generic conspiracy beliefs-was associated with lower guideline adherence (ß = - 0.32, 95% CI - 0.53 to - 0.11, p < .001). Conditional random forests suggested that adverse childhood experiences and peer and conduct problems were relevant predictors of both conspiracy belief categories. CONCLUSION: While a significant proportion of our sample of adolescents in psychiatric treatment endorsed conspiracy beliefs, the majority did not. Furthermore, and to some degree, contrary to public perception, we found that adolescents show relatively good adherence to public health measures-even while experiencing a high degree of mental distress. The predictive value of adverse childhood experiences and peer/conduct problems for conspiracy beliefs might be explained by compensatory mechanisms to ensure the safety, structure, and inclusion that conspiracies provide.

Coping styles mediating the relationship between perceived chronic stress and conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19.

As a global health crisis, COVID-19 has led to a rise in overall stress levels. Concurrently, conspiracy beliefs regarding the origin and spread of the disease have become widespread. Engaging in such beliefs can be explained as a form of coping in order to deal with elevated levels of stress. The present study investigated the indirect effects of coping strategies in the association between perceived chronic stress and COVID-related conspiracy beliefs. We report data from an online survey (N = 1,354 individuals: 807 female; 508 male; 8 diverse; 6 not specified; mean age 39.14 years) in German-speaking countries collected between January and March 2021. Our results indicate that people who felt more stressed were more prone to conspiracy beliefs. Coping via acceptance and self-blame was associated with decreased tendencies towards COVID-related conspiracy beliefs, while people who used denial as a strategy were more prone to these beliefs. These findings emphasize the need for stress management interventions and effective coping strategies during times of crisis in order to reduce chronic perceived stress, promote adaptive coping, and ultimately reduce conspiracy beliefs.

Habituation of salivary cortisol and cardiovascular reactivity to a repeated real-life and virtual reality Trier Social Stress Test.

BACKGROUND: Although the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) constitutes a valid paradigm for social stress induction, less is known about the effects of a virtual reality (VR) TSST on short- and long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic-adreno-medullar (SAM) axis responses. Hence, this study set out to evaluate reactivity and habituation of self-reported stress and HPA and SAM reactivity in a real TSST and VR-TSST when compared to a placebo TSST. METHOD: Sixty-eight healthy young adults (50% female) were randomly assigned to either a real TSST, a VR-TSST, or a placebo TSST, all of which were conducted three times (one day and one week post initial exposure). Social presence, self-reported stress, salivary cortisol, heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV) were analyzed using ANOVAs and multilevel models. FINDINGS: On the first exposure, both the real and VR-TSST showed significantly stronger cortisol and cardiovascular responses than the placebo. On the second visit, the cortisol response was still significantly high-and the HRV response low-for the real and VR-TSST. The third visit resulted in HR, HRV, and cortisol responses comparable to the placebo group. Furthermore, the real TSST induced more self-reported stress than the placebo on all three visits, the VR-TSST only on the first two visits. Social presence was stable across conditions and had no association with stress markers. CONCLUSION: These findings imply that the replicability of stress exposures at shorter intervals seems problematic for the traditional TSST, and for the VR-TSST.