Differences in Mindfulness and Other Coping Outcomes Among College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Modeling Approach

Young adults are at significant risk for increased substance abuse, worsening mental health issues, and elevated suicidal behaviors. These risks have increased since the beginning of the COVID -19 pandemic. Self-help interventions (e.g., mindfulness meditation) are available to counteract these negative effects on mental health. Mindfulness meditation has become popular as a tool for stress reduction and emotional regulation. There are significant health benefits to mindfulness-based interventions, such as increased awareness. This study’s purpose was to gain greater understanding of whether mindfulness is helpful to mental health among young adults during COVID-19. Quantitative analyses found: (1) Current employment predicted greater adherence to formal mindful practice and trait mindfulness; (2) formal practice was associated with trait mindfulness; (3) adherence to informal practice yielded a significant inverse association with trait anxiety; and (4) avoidance coping acted as mediator between both employment status and college experience (as exogenous variables), and trait anxiety, generalized anxiety/depression, and COVID-19 stress (as endogenous variables).Funding Information: This work was supported by the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Graduate Thesis Award – Grant Number: 108296.Declaration of Interests: The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest present upon manuscript submission.Ethics Approval Statement: This study (IRB # 21.029) was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in the Office of Institutional Compliance & Ethics (OICE). In addition, a waiver of signed consent and an exemption from review was granted as this study met the established criteria of minimal risk by the IRB and OICE. As dictated by the OICE, this study does not involve "procedures that require consent outside of a research setting.” The reason for this exemption was due to our study’s online recruitment and participation process in which guaranteed anonymity was promised in the recruitment form. No identifying information beyond what was collected in all mental health measures and demographic questions, participants were each assigned a randomly generated number, and participants received information on local mental health resources