Following the declaration of the pandemic, students’ education has to be done at a distance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study evaluated the association of university students’ COVID-19 phobia, pain severity, sleep quality, physical activity, fatigue levels, and quality of life on students’ achievement.

This cross-sectional survey was conducted by including 353 students from the university faculty of health sciences. The Pain Quality Assessment Scale was used to assess pain, the Fatigue Severity Scale to evaluate fatigue, the COVID-19 Phobia Scale to assess fear of disease, the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form to evaluate physical activity level, and the Jenkins Sleep Scale to assess sleep quality, The Short Form-36 to determine the quality of life, and Online Learning Systems Acceptance Scale to evaluate satisfaction with distance education. Multiple linear regression and path analysis were conducted to identify factors associated with academic achievement.

It was found that age (B = 0.045; P = 0.040), BMI (B = −0.200; P = 0.004), and physical (B = 0.128; P = 0.008), psychological (B = 0.057; P = 0.012) and social (B = 0.189; P = 0.018) domains of quality of life were associated with the level of achievement.

Precautions must be taken to improve students’ academic achievement and quality of life in preparing for the future against infectious and epidemic diseases.

Internationally, stresses related to the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the mental health of family caregivers of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs).

This cross-sectional study investigated demographic, situational and psychological variables associated with mental wellbeing among family caregivers of adults with IDDs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Baseline data from 202 family caregivers participating in virtual courses to support caregiver mental well-being were collected from October 2020 to June 2022 via online survey. Mental well-being was assessed using total scores from the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. Demographic, situational and psychological contributors to mental well-being were identified using hierarchical regression analysis.

Variables associated with lower levels of mental well-being were gender (women); age (<60 years old); lack of vaccine availability; loss of programming for their family member; social isolation; and low confidence in their ability to prepare for healthcare, support their family member's mental health, manage burnout and navigate healthcare and social systems. Connection with other families, confidence in managing burnout and building resilience and confidence in working effectively across health and social systems were significant predictors of mental well-being in the final regression model, which predicted 55.6% of variance in mental well-being (P < 0.001).

Family caregivers need ways to foster social connections with other families, and support to properly utilise healthcare and social services during public health emergencies. Helping them attend to their needs as caregivers can promote their mental health and ultimately improve outcomes for their family members with disabilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a disaster event. Exposure to stressors during and after disaster events is associated with negative mental health symptoms. To inform targeted COVID-19 recovery efforts, data are needed to understand which stressors play a key role in this relationship.

Cross-sectional survey data (demographics, impacts of COVID-19, social determinants of health, depression, and anxiety) were collected online from adults living in New York state between May and June 2020. Differences in the proportion of stressors (COVID-19 and social determinants) experienced by race/ethnicity were assessed using chi-square analyses. Logistic regression was used to assess which factors were associated with increased odds of depression and anxiety.

A majority (n = 258, 62.2%) of the 415 respondents reported being directly impacted by the pandemic. Non-white respondents reported a significantly larger proportion of stressors compared to white respondents. Under half of respondents reported depression (n = 171, 41.2%) and anxiety (n = 164, 39.5%). Healthcare and food concerns were associated with increased odds of depression and anxiety, and economic concerns were associated with increased odds of anxiety.

Findings underscore the need to respond to the COVID-19 mental health crisis by addressing social determinants of health.

To compare the characteristics of GP referrals to CAMHS prior to and over the entire pandemic.

All accepted referrals to a Dublin-based CAMHS between January 1, 2019, and June 30, 2023, were examined. Referral letters were anonymised in batches, and information was extracted directly onto a designated proforma.

Before the pandemic (January 2019–February 2020), an average of 17.8 referrals were accepted per month, while during and after the pandemic (March 2020–June 2023), this rose to 18.7 accepted referrals per month. Increases were observed in the clinic’s prioritisation of cases during the pandemic period (54.8% v. 41%, p < .001).

Referrals post COVID-19 were older (13.1–13.64 years, p = .010) with a higher proportion of females (50.2% v. 62.1%, p < .001). Internalising disorders increased during the pandemic (68.7% v. 78.7%, p = .001), with self-harm referrals also being notably more frequent (18.5% v. 36.3%, p < .001). Referrals for anxiety (43.0% v. 78.2%, p = .004) and eating disorders (0% v.. 6.2%, p < .001) increased significantly. Referrals for psychosis (8.4% v. 4.8%, p = .032) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (26.5% v. 18.7%, p = .008) decreased after the onset of the pandemic.

Notable increases in referrals for anxiety, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders underscore the impact of the pandemic on youth mental health. Understanding these shifts is crucial for CAMHS to adapt resources and interventions effectively. Clinicians must remain vigilant in assessing and addressing the evolving mental health needs of youths in the post-COVID era, ensuring timely and appropriate interventions, and resources to mitigate long-term consequences.

This study was conducted to investigate individuals’ perceptions of media messages about the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect of these messages on their fear and uncertainty.

Data for this descriptive correlational study were collected between October and November 2020. A total of 653 individuals living in Turkey provided online survey data by completing a Personal Information Form, the Pandemic Uncertainty Scale, and the COVID-19 Pandemic Fear Scale.

The mean age of the participants was 52.1 ± 12.6, and 79.9% were female. It was found that 27.9% of participants “always” followed COVID-19 news in the media, and 41.3% “often” followed COVID-19-related news. Participants’ COVID-19 fear (24.46 ± 8.07) and uncertainty (55.35 ± 8.63) scores were moderate and correlated.

Level of trust in mass media was found to affect uncertainty about the pandemic. As level of trust in mass media increased, uncertainty about the pandemic decreased. Appropriate measures must be identified and adopted for effective and safe media use in situations posing massive and significant health threats such as COVID-19.

This cross-sectional study, carried out from 2021 to 2022, investigated the factors associated with domestic violence in 400 Brazilian pregnant women during the COVID-19 pandemic. Violence was assessed with the World Health Organization's Violence Against Women questionnaire and the Abuse Assessment Screen. Demographic, socioeconomic, obstetric, lifestyle and mental health data were collected.

Violence at any time in their lives was reported by 52.2% of the women, and psychological violence was the most prevalent type (19.5%). Violence was associated with being single and mental health changes. Pregnant women exposed to any lifetime violence and psychological violence were, respectively, 4.67 and 5.93 times more likely to show mental health changes compared with women with no reported violence.

Training health professionals involved in prenatal care in the early detection of single women and women with mental health changes could be important in preventing domestic violence.

The mental health of healthcare workers (HCWs) may have improved after the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to model the trajectories of psychological distress, depressive symptoms, and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and toward its end in HCWs in Czechia and investigate, which COVID-19 work stressors were associated with these trajectories.

The study included 322 HCWs from the Czech arm of the international HEROES Study who participated in an online questionnaire in two waves during the pandemic and one wave toward its end. Growth mixture modeling identified trajectory patterns of depressive symptoms (measured with Patient Health Questionnaire), distress (General Health Questionnaire), and resilience (Brief Resilience Scale). Logistic regression was applied to estimate the association of COVID-19 stressors with mental health trajectories, adjusting for baseline characteristics.

Trajectory classes revealed both high and low depressive symptoms (high in 61% of participants), distress (high in 82% of participants), and resilience (low in 32% of participants). Depressive symptoms and distress trajectories demonstrated the same shape, first increasing during the pandemic and decreasing toward its end, while resilience remained constant. Exposure to COVID-19 stressors, in particular, the experience of stigmatization, discrimination, and violence, was associated with high depressive symptoms and distress trajectories, but not with resilience.

Interventions provided to HCWs during crises such as pandemic should target distress and depressive symptoms and need to address stigmatization, discrimination, and violence.

Not all scientific publications are equally useful to policy-makers tasked with mitigating the spread and impact of diseases, especially at the start of novel epidemics and pandemics. The urgent need for actionable, evidence-based information is paramount, but the nature of preprint and peer-reviewed articles published during these times is often at odds with such goals. For example, a lack of novel results and a focus on opinions rather than evidence were common in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) publications at the start of the pandemic in 2019. In this work, we seek to automatically judge the utility of these scientific articles, from a public health policy making persepctive, using only their titles.

Deep learning natural language processing (NLP) models were trained on scientific COVID-19 publication titles from the CORD-19 dataset and evaluated against expert-curated COVID-19 evidence to measure their real-world feasibility at screening these scientific publications in an automated manner.

This work demonstrates that it is possible to judge the utility of COVID-19 scientific articles, from a public health policy-making perspective, based on their title alone, using deep natural language processing (NLP) models.

NLP models can be successfully trained on scienticic articles and used by public health experts to triage and filter the hundreds of new daily publications on novel diseases such as COVID-19 at the start of pandemics.

The sudden onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was accompanied by a myriad of ethical issues that prompted the issuing of various ethical guidance documents for health care professionals in clinical, research, and public health settings throughout the United Kingdom (UK) of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The aim of this review was to identify the main principles in ethical guidance documents published in the UK and Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This review used a qualitative systematic review methodology with thematic synthesis to analyze the included ethics-related guidance documents, as defined in this review, published in the UK and Ireland from March 2020 through March 2022. The search included a general search in Google Scholar and a targeted search on the websites of the relevant professional bodies and public health authorities in the two countries. The ethical principles in these documents were analyzed using the constant comparative method (CCM).

Forty-four guidance documents met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Ten main ethical principles were identified, namely: fairness, honesty, minimizing harm, proportionality, responsibility, autonomy, respect, informed decision making, duty of care, and reciprocity.

The guidelines did not present the ethical principles in equal detail. Some principles lacked definitions, leaving them vulnerable to misinterpretation by the documents’ end users. Priority was frequently given to collectivist ethics over individualistic approaches. Further clarity is required in future ethical guidance documents to better guide health care professionals in similar situations.