Finished projects

A representative Swiss study on the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic on children and adolescents, their parents and young adults

Under the direction of Prof. Meichun Mohler-Kuo and Prof. Susanne Walitza, the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich (KJPP Zurich), together with La Haute École de la Santé La Source Lausanne, la Haute École de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO), conducted the first representative study in Switzerland on the impact of the Covid pandemic on children and adolescents, their parents and young adults.

Methods: For the study, 3 questionnaires for parents, children and young adults on stress, psychological symptoms and, for example, coping strategies, were developed for psychiatric screening together with the RKI Institute Berlin and the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Würzburg. All three questionnaires were translated into German, French and Italian and programmed on an online platform in three languages in collaboration with the Link Institute, which ensured the representative selection of families.

Overall, we were able to survey three different target groups: The first target group was young adults throughout Switzerland who had already taken part in the "Swiss Youth Epidemiological Study on Mental Health" (S-YESMH) and for whom we already had data on mental health from several previous studies. The original sampling of young adults was carried out in 2017 by the client at the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) on the basis of the SRPH (sampling frame for personal and household surveys).

These people were aged between 20 and 24 at the time of the current survey in 2020. The second group consisted of children aged between 12 and 17 throughout Switzerland who could be interviewed online in German, French or Italian. The children were recruited for the interview via their parents (group 3). In order to be able to interview young people aged 12-17, the explicit consent (informed consent) of a parent was required. Therefore, the adolescents were not recruited and interviewed directly, but via their parents. Information already available in the LINK Internet panel (children in the household) was used to select the parents. The survey was conducted using CAWI (Computer Assisted Online Interviewing). In this context, the LINK Institute was responsible for implementing the online questionnaire and carrying out the fieldwork. A total of 1627 young adults and 1146 parents and children took part in our survey.

Results: The study showed significant stress perceived by young adults and symptoms of mental disorders, especially among women following the first Covid-19 lockdowns in Switzerland. The detailed results of the study are currently being reviewed by the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and will be published soon.

The 4th phase of the "Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors" (C-SURF), which was led by the University Hospital of Vaud (CHUV) and the University of Zurich (UZH), has been running since April 1, 2018.

C-SURF is a cohort study on the development of alcohol and substance use among young Swiss men. As it is an epidemiological study, a cross-section of the population of young Swiss men is included in the study, regardless of their actual consumption behavior, i.e. from no consumption at all to the most diverse variants of alcohol and substance consumption.

A detailed description of C-SURF including the available results and publications can be found on the project homepage:
http://www.c-surf.ch