How memories of pandemic lockdowns predict declines in young people’s psychological well-being

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures to prevent infection have led to major disruptions in the daily lives of children and adolescents. A new study in Child development from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, the University of California at Riverside and the University of California at Davis in the United States investigated personal memories (i.e. memories of events in one’s own life) of the first lockdown in Denmark in spring 2020 among children and adolescents, and how this may have affected their psychological well-being in the following year.

For context, in Denmark, the first school closure was announced on March 11, 2020. The school closure lasted until April 17, 2020 for younger students (kindergarten to 5th grade) and lasted until May 18, 2020 for older students (6th to 9th grade). As in other countries, the number of COVID-19 infections increased dramatically in the fall of 2020, resulting in a second school closure from December 17, 2020 to May 6, 2021.

In addition to school closures, Danish policies also included broader government-enforced lockdown measures, such as the closure of cinemas and restaurants, social distancing, bans on gatherings, work-from-home orders, and mandatory mask wearing.

The study, which may be the first and only longitudinal study to examine whether personal memories predict declines in children and adolescents’ psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that female adolescents’ psychological well-being fared the worst.

Furthermore, memories that contained more factual information about COVID-19 and more negative effects predicted more robust declines in psychological well-being. The findings highlight how aspects of personal memories may help exacerbate or mitigate the negative consequences of the COVID-19 experience from March 2020 to July 2021.

Researchers suggest that future research could benefit from examining how children’s relative tendency to include semantic details (e.g., facts about COVID-19) versus episodic details (e.g., where they were when they first heard about lockdowns, what specific interaction occurred with family or friends) in their narratives about past and future events of local and global significance might relate to children’s and adolescents’ psychological adjustment and coping during difficult times.

The Society for Research in Child Development had the opportunity to discuss this research with Dr. Tirill Fjellhaugen Hjuler from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Aarhus University Hospital and Dr. Simona Ghetti from the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.

What made you decide to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected children and adolescents in Denmark?

Dr. Hjuler: As lockdown measures were implemented around the world, scientists and laypeople alike began to wonder how they would impact children and teenagers. Different perspectives were debated, ranging from sobering concerns about their mental health to expectations of increased resilience, all of which were based on little direct knowledge of how the effects of an event of the magnitude of this pandemic would manifest. We felt it was necessary to conduct a longitudinal study to find empirical answers to the many questions our society was grappling with.

Dr. Ghetti: I would like to add a word of praise for Dr. Hjuler’s ingenuity. At the time, she was a doctoral student who had planned to visit my lab for a year. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, she immediately realized the importance of reaching out to her community and answering different research questions than she had originally planned. Examining autobiographical memory across lockdown periods offered an unprecedented perspective on how children and adolescents experienced and were affected by this global event. Success in graduate school is often about understanding how to ask the right question at the right time.

Can you give a brief overview of the research?

Dr. Hjuler: We investigated the longitudinal associations between the content of personal memories before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and the mental health of children and adolescents (8- to 16-year-olds). Participants were assessed three times (June 2020, January 2021, and June 2021). At each time point, they were asked to write about their personal memories of the first lockdown and to rate their psychological well-being and depressive symptoms. All memories were then coded for content such as emotional tone, episodic details, and semantic (i.e., factual) information about COVID-19 in general.

First, we found that children and adolescents’ mental health declined over time, with adolescent females faring worst across all time points. Second, we found that the content of memories lost detail over time, in terms of episodic specificity, semantic content, and emotional valence. Critically, we found that children and adolescents whose stories contained more negative emotional content and more factual information about COVID-19 and the resulting restrictions fared worst over time.

How can these findings be useful for parents and caregivers, policy makers, and educators interested in the well-being of children and adolescents?

Drs. Hjuler and Ghetti: Our findings suggest that the way children and adolescents remember and think about difficult times, such as the COVID-19 lockdowns, may influence their mental health over time. From previous research, we knew that there are links between the emotional content of personal memories and indicators of psychological adjustment. Here, we show a longitudinal association that directly links negative emotionality in stories about events of global significance to measures of future well-being.

Interestingly, integrating higher levels of factual information about difficult times also seems to have a negative impact on children and adolescents’ mental health. Adding factual information to a personal story may be a sign that children and adolescents tried to distance themselves from the personal, unique meaning of the lockdown experience. Adults should therefore be aware of how information about potentially difficult times is discussed and communicated: observing certain content during the child’s reminiscences may provide insights into risks to well-being.

Were you surprised by any of the findings?

Drs Hjuler and Ghetti: Yes, we were particularly surprised to find a decrease in the negative emotional content of the memories over time, as we had actually expected an increase in negativity, reflecting the burden of dealing with the ongoing consequences of the pandemic over time. It is possible that this is because our analysis focused on memories of the first lockdown and by the time we assessed them later, other memories from the pandemic became more dominant or emotionally relevant.

Furthermore, as children and adolescents were restricted from in-person socialization during lockdowns and unable to leave their homes for extended periods of time, their experiences became less unique and more schematized. Despite this normative shift, participants whose stories were rated as conveying more negative emotionality fared worse over time, underscoring the importance of that early emotional content for participants’ well-being.

What is the next step in this area of ​​research?

Dr. Hjuler: We believe that future work can benefit from examining how both factual and episodic information in personal memories may be linked to children’s and adolescents’ psychological adjustment and coping during difficult times. In addition, future research should examine how memory narratives about challenging times, such as lockdowns, may differ from other types of childhood narratives, including children’s and adolescents’ personal memories about other relevant events and thoughts about the future.

Only by examining the content of all these different memories can we know whether the results reported here are specific to the early period of the pandemic, when radical changes occurred in the lives of children and adolescents, or whether our patterns of results extend to other forms of remembering and imagining experiences related to the pandemic.