{"id":12913,"date":"2023-06-08T18:40:17","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T18:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2023\/06\/08\/psychologist-young-adults-hit-hard-by-pandemics-toll-on-mental-health\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:29:22","slug":"psychologist-young-adults-hit-hard-by-pandemics-toll-on-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2023\/06\/08\/psychologist-young-adults-hit-hard-by-pandemics-toll-on-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychologist: Young adults hit hard by pandemic\u2019s toll on mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n

Lost jobs and life disruptions contribute to 18- to 29-year-olds\u2019 distress<\/p>\n

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The COVID-19 public health emergency may be over, but its impact on the mental health of adults ages 18 to 29 remains a pressing challenge, according to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett<\/a>, a developmental psychologist and senior research scholar at Clark University.<\/p>\n

More than two decades ago, Arnett coined the term “emerging adulthood” to describe the age period from the late teens to the mid-20s. He has since conducted years of research around issues that have confronted these young adults, making him one of world’s leading authorities on the age group.<\/p>\n

From the start of the pandemic through its peak, emerging adults experienced higher rates of distress than any other adult age group, according to Arnett’s review of government and scholarly data. His findings were published in a report<\/a> commissioned and released by the Ruderman Family Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Emerging adults’ “identity explorations” were disrupted during “the crucial years when they were beginning to build a life for themselves in education, work, and love relationships,” Arnett explains.<\/p>\n

\"Arnett
Psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, who first coined the term “emerging adulthood” in 2000, wrote the report on young adults’ mental health issues during and after the pandemic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The personal optimism that is typical during this age period was jarred by the unprecedented dislocation of adapting to the pandemic,” he says, “and feeling in-between adolescence and adulthood was sharpened and extended by the unexpected delay in their progress toward building an independent life.”<\/p>\n

Emerging adults’ mental health still has not recovered, despite the end of the COVID emergency, according to Arnett’s study. Among them, symptoms of anxiety disorder and depression remains nearly as high now — nearly 40 percent for anxiety disorder and almost 35 percent for depression — as in the first year of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

“Rates of mental health distress remain especially high among young women and Asian Americans,” Arnett writes. Young women have a “long-established greater susceptibility to mental health distress,” he explains, and Asian Americans experienced “widespread hostility and racism directed at them by other Americans” blaming China for the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Among the difficulties that most affected emerging adults’ mental health:<\/p>\n