Faidra Foteini Tsami, Aimilia Kanellopoulou, Loukia Alexopoulou-Prounia, Aggeliki Tsapara, Panos Alexopoulos, Apostolos Vantarakis*, Kiriakos Katsadoros
Background: COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an increasing deterioration of university students’ quality of life and mental health. COVID-19 pandemic forced university students to take online classes, which may have an impact on students’ education. In addition, students lost many job opportunities because of the pandemic. Faced with unemployment and study pressure and worried about the epidemic, university students were prone to high overall negative emotions, anxiety, and depression.
Aims: Our study aims to conduct an impact assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life and mental health of university students.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using an online interview survey on students at public universities in Greece to better understand the effects of the pandemic on their quality of life and mental health. Three tools were used (WHOQOL-BREF, IES-R, and HADS).
Results: 1.266 university students from public Greek Universities participated in the study. We observed that 55.8% had a score lower than 50 in the psychological domain and 52.3% in the social domain of WHOQOL-BREF. Additionally, 46.6% of the respondents had a score of 37+ on the IES-R questionnaire, 45% of the respondents had abnormal results regarding anxiety and 33.6% had abnormal results regarding depression on the HADS questionnaire.
Conclusion: Due to the long duration of the pandemic and measures such as lockdown and stay-at-home orders, the COVID-19 pandemic brings negative impacts on the quality of life and wellbeing of students. The findings of our study highlight the urgent need to develop interventions and strategies to address the quality of life and mental health consequences of university students.