An international comparison of gender differences in mental health among higher-education students during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: a multilevel design

Abstract

Abstract Background Mental health problems are a common phenomenon among higher-education students. How these mental health problems manifest themselves appears to differ between male and female students. While the latter group bears a greater risk of developing internalizing problems, with depression being particularly prevalent, these problems manifest themselves in male students mainly via externalizing disorders, with alcohol abuse being the most prevalent. Available cross-national research on students’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, to date, mainly focused on the prevalence of depressive symptoms, thereby ignoring a possible gendered impact of the pandemic. Methods The current study used the COVID-19 International Student Well-Being Study, which collected data on students’ mental health during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 26 countries, and multilevel modeling was applied. Results It finds that, overall, female students reported more depressive feelings, and male students reported more excessive alcohol consumption. The strictness of the governmental containment measures explained a substantial amount of these gender differences in depressive feelings, but not in excessive alcohol consumption. Conclusions Our study highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic had a gendered impact on students’ mental health. Studies that ignore the gendered impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are therefore limited in scope.