Improving emotional, economic and behavioural resilience to COVID-19 in African University students

新冠肺炎疫情对大学生产生了严重的不利影响，他们的教育和培训被严重扰乱，社交和就业前景丧失。即使在大流行之前，大约三分之一的学生也会出现抑郁症状，经济上处于不利地位的学生面临的风险最大。抑郁的学生在学业上表现不佳，这对他们的就业前景有负面影响，他们也不太可能遵循健康建议。因此，抑郁的学生特别容易受到新冠肺炎疫情对健康和经济的影响。对于赞比亚等欠发达国家的学生来说，这是一个特别令人担忧的问题，在这些国家，由于缺乏资源和与精神疾病有关的耻辱，获得精神卫生服务的机会受到限制。这项研究旨在通过为1000名自认为有抑郁症症状的学生提供有效的在线抑郁症治疗计划(MoodGYM)来解决这种不利的循环。这些学生将从赞比亚、马拉维和博茨瓦纳的大学招收，这些国家都被确定为有资格获得海外发展援助。MoodGYM基于认知行为疗法的原则，旨在通过帮助用户识别和改变那些可以驱动和维持情绪低落的负面想法和行为模式来降低抑郁的风险。这5个单元特别针对15岁至25岁的年轻人，包括练习、实际作业和小测验。这项研究将调查MoodGYM与大学范围内的在线新冠肺炎预防计划相结合是否会改善学生的心理健康，增强他们抵御新冠肺炎健康和经济挑战的能力。这项针对不同地方情况进行调整的在线新冠肺炎预防计划，将把社交疏远和遮脸等促进健康的行为描绘成学生生活的正常部分。我们将收集预防计划的反馈数据和在MoodGYM/新冠肺炎预防计划干预前后的调查数据，以寻找抑郁、学习成绩和预防COVID行为的改善，并检查男性和女性是否同等地感受到益处。我们还将采访参与者，试图了解Moodgyam是如何帮助他们的，并探索他们对新冠肺炎对他们的情绪和学习影响的感受。我们还想找出哪些因素与心理健康和学业成绩的改善有关，以便我们能够确保干预措施在其他欠发达国家的可持续性和成功实施。

The Covid-19 pandemic has had significant adverse effects on university students, whose education and training has been severely disrupted and their social contacts and job prospects lost. Even before the pandemic around of a third of students would had had symptoms of depression, with students who are economically disadvantaged at greatest risk. Depressed students do less well academically which has negative impacts on their employment prospects and they are also less likely to follow health advice. Thus depressed students are particularly vulnerable to the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a particular concern for students in less developed countries such as Zambia where access to mental health services is limited by the lack of resources and by the stigma associated with psychiatric illness. This study aims to address this cycle of disadvantage by providing targeted access to an effective, online treatment programme for depression (moodgym) to a 1000 students who identify themselves as having symptoms of depression. These students will be recruited from universities in Zambia, Malawi and Botswana: all countries identified as eligible for overseas development assistance. Moodgym is based on principles of cognitive behavioural therapy and aims to reduce the risk of depression by helping users to recognize and change those negative thoughts and behaviour patterns which can drive and sustain low mood. The 5 modules are particularly aimed at young people aged 15 to 25 and include exercises, practical assignments and quizzes. This study will investigate whether combining moodgym with a university-wide online COVID-19 prevention programme will improve students' mental health and enhance their ability to withstand the health and economic challenges of COVID-19. The online COVID-19 prevention program, adapted for each local context, will portray health-promotion behaviours such as social distancing and face coverings as a normal part of student life. We will collect feedback data from the prevention programme and survey data before and after the moodgym/ COVID-19 prevention programme intervention to look for improvements in depression, academic performance and COVID prevention behaviours and to check whether benefits are felt equally by men and women. We will also interview participants to try to understand how moodgyam helped them and to explore their feelings about the impact of COVID-19 on their mood and their studies. We also want to find out which factors are associated with improved mental health and academic outcomes so that we can ensure the intervention's sustainability and successful implementation in other less developed countries.