Students’ mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown

Background and Study Aim. The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown had wide-ranging consequences and disrupted many aspects of students’ daily lives. One of the most affected areas was mental health, as students lost the opportunity to study in direct contact and faced new stressors related to their living, health, and financial conditions. The aim of this study is to develop a model that predicts students' mental well-being levels during pandemic periods and to design practical interventions to support mental health in crisis situations. Material and Methods. A total of 1424 students from four Polish universities participated in the study. They filled out an original questionnaire consisting of 17 questions about basic demographic data (age, gender, career, place of living), daily time spent on physical activity, access to recreational facilities, health self-assessment, financial situation, daily time spent sitting or lying down, physical well-being, and mental well-being. The research was conducted in two stages. First, an ordinal-choice logit model was applied. The mental state was regressed against physical, financial, and health states, while controlling for gender and place of residence. Probability response analysis was carried out. Then, the actual and predicted mental state classes were compared, and the misspecified results were extracted. The differences between subsamples containing underestimated and overestimated mental states were analysed by applying Pearson’s χ² test. The p-values were obtained through Monte Carlo simulations with 10,000 replications. Results. The regression model revealed a positive, highly statistically significant relationship between mental state and physical, financial, and health states. The model underestimated the actual mental state for 368 respondents and overestimated it for 441. The misspecified respondents entered the “optimist” and “pessimist” subsamples, for which differences between proportions were tested. No significant differences were found for urban versus rural inhabitants (p = 0.905). There were significantly more women in the “optimist” subsample (p = 0.99). The null hypotheses of no differences between classes for physical state and health state were decisively rejected at a 1% significance level. The null for financial state was rejected at a 10% significance level. Conclusions. Women showed higher levels of optimism than men, indicating gender differences in emotional resilience. Place of residence (urban vs. rural) had no significant effect on mental well-being. Many students demonstrated psychological resilience during lockdown, especially those with social support or effective coping strategies. Psychological counselling services are essential to strengthen coping mechanisms and support students in future pandemics.