Affiliation:
1. Social Policy Institute Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis MO USA
2. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem Israel
3. Universidad Andrés Bello Santiago Chile
Abstract
Although social support is strongly related to college students' mental health in the context of COVID‐19, little is known about the academic mechanisms that explain and influence this relationship. This knowledge gap limits our ability to create effective interventions. Our current study extends the previous research by using longitudinal data from 2020 to 2021 and leveraging a unique panel dataset from over 1,500 university students in Israel. By using a cross‐lagged panel model, we examine how the relationship between social support and mental health is partially explained by academic coping, as well as how these relationships differ across perceived teaching quality. We find that academic coping partially explains the relationship between social support and depression for students who perceived higher‐quality instruction but not for students who perceived lower‐quality instruction. Moreover, these relationships are not apparent for anxiety, suggesting that anxiety may relate to out‐of‐school considerations like pandemic‐related health concerns and hardships. We close with implications for policy and practice.