Front Psychiatry. 2025 Apr 4;16:1452732. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1452732. eCollection 2025.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Initial studies suggest that individuals with a history of traumatic life experiences, particularly childhood trauma, may be more susceptible to increased mental health problems in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
METHODS: The present cross-sectional study compared the mental health status of three cohorts of university students before (2016), at the beginning (2020) and at the end (2022) of the COVID-19 pandemic. The students in each cohort were divided into two groups: those with self-reported moderate/severe childhood trauma (n = 126) and those with no/mild childhood trauma (n = 438).
RESULTS: Across all cohorts, students with moderate/severe childhood trauma consistently reported higher levels of psychological and physical stress compared to individuals with no/mild childhood trauma experiences. However, only the no/mild childhood trauma group exhibited an increase in mental health problems (i.e., heightened depressive symptoms and greater subjective impairment due to physical and psychological symptoms) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, within the no/mild childhood trauma group, students in the 2022 cohort reported significantly higher psychological distress compared to those surveyed in 2020. In contrast, mental health scores among students with moderate/severe childhood trauma remained unchanged across the pre-pandemic and pandemic cohorts.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study do not support the hypothesis that the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately exacerbated mental health problems in individuals with a history of moderate to severe childhood trauma. Instead, our results suggest that the pandemic’s impact on mental health was more pronounced in students with no or only mild childhood trauma.
PMID:40256157 | PMC:PMC12006152 | DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1452732
