The Mental Health Of Myanmar Undergraduates in 2022 in the Context of COVID-19 and Military Coups: Evidence From Myanmar Version of the SCL-90-R

Myanmar has experienced social instability due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a military coup (in 2021). Symptoms Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) was translated into Burmese from English through a translation-back translation procedure. The SCL-90-R was employed to investigate the impact of social instability on the mental health of undergraduate students in Myanmar. Data were collected before (in 2019, N=554) and during (in 2022, N=619) the COVID-19 pandemic and military coup. The data from both samples confirmed that the SCL-90-R was acceptable for structural validity and internal consistency. Considering the medium and large effect size (Cohen’s d > 0.5), social instability in Myanmar mainly increased Depression scores among undergraduates. A re-analysis of the data from Chinese samples before and during COVID-19 revealed that, initial stage of COVID-19 mainly increased scores of Phobic Anxiety among Chinese people; the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of undergraduates in 2022 was weak. The results suggest that the initial stage COVID-19 and the military coup affect different dimensions of mental health, specifically, the initial stage of the COVID-19 mainly caused Phobic anxiety, and the military coups mainly led to Depression.Funding: This study was supported by General Program of the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (Grant No. cstc2021jcyj-msxmX0758) and Humanities and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 19YJC190002).Declaration of Interest: The authors declare that there are no competing interests.Ethical Approval: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee in Southwest University and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.