Symposium: Developmental Invited Symposium: Impacts of COVID-19.
Background: Disruptions to daily life and enforced social distancing are some of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is taking a toll on mental health, particularly in adolescents, who already are at higher risk for the emergence of psychopathology.
Method: We present findings from an ongoing longitudinal study of adolescents who were recruited ~5 years before the pandemic and followed annually and at two time-points during the COVID-19 pandemic (immediately after the Bay Area shelter-in-place directive and ~2 months later).
Results: Several risk factors for psychopathology in adolescence were found to exacerbate the increase in internalizing symptoms from before to during the pandemic, including advanced pubertal staging (relative to same-age peers), higher parental stress, higher socioeconomic disadvantage, and stronger functional connectivity within the ventral affective brain network. Importantly, however, we found that other neural and environmental factors buffered pandemic-related increases in symptoms of psychopathology, including stronger functional connectivity within the executive control network and greater perceived social support.
Conclusions: These findings highlight the interacting roles of biological and social variables in understanding how adolescents are responding to stress in adaptive or nonadaptive ways.