Covid-19 International Student Well-being Study (C19 ISWS) - Data from Wageningen University & Research

The corona outbreak has a strong negative impact on the (mental) health and well-being of the population. People experienced more anxiety, stress, anger, fear and depressive symptoms at the start of the outbreak of corona compared to before the outbreak (Torales, O’Higgins, Castaldelli-Maia, & Ventriglio, 2020). The Trimbos Institute for Mental Health (2020) showed that these adverse mental health problems were experienced by one third of the Dutch population.

For students the corona outbreak implied rapid changes in their personal lives as well as their student life. In Wageningen, on-campus classes were cancelled and replaced by online alternatives. For many students the outbreak created uncertainty whether they could finish their study in time. In addition, due to social distancing measures many students moved back to their parental homes or lived more isolated in their student homes. These changes are likely to impact their mental health and well-being
In order to examine the (mental) health and well-being of students across Europe, the University of Antwerp developed a digital survey. The survey assessed students’ living conditions (physical and financial) and lifestyle behaviours (physical activity, alcohol consumption and tobacco use) before and after the outbreak of corona. In addition, students’ mental health and well-being were assessed by using the CES-D 8 scale (Radloff, 1977) and resilience was measured by using the Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008). Finally, in the survey students were asked to evaluate the measures taken by governments and universities in response to the corona outbreak.

The overall aim of the survey is to identify how the corona outbreak relates to students’ mental health and well-being, hypothesizing that national and university-level measures significantly impact on the well-being of university students

Wageningen University participated in this survey, together with universities and other educational institutes from 26 different countries (see Appendix A for participating countries) including many European countries, Canada, United States and South-Africa. This report shows the preliminary results of this survey for students of Wageningen University