Mental health, school achievement and Covid-19 - longterm consequencies and protective factors

During the past decades, we have witnessed diminishing achievements and an increase in stress and mental illness among Swedish adolescents. This alarming situation may now exacerbate by psychosocial and economic consequences of Covid-19.

To date there are almost no studies on how Swedish adolescents have experienced the introduction of earlier grading in grade 6 and the long-term consequences of early grading on their mental health and future achievements. How this situation has evolved along with the long-term consequences of Covid-19 is unknown.

This project focuses on adolescents who experienced earlier grading in compulsory school and distance learning during upper secondary school due to a Covid-19 outbreak in early 2021, and who will graduate when a new survey is planned to take place in 2023.

The school and life situation of adolescents born in 2004 differ thus in several crucial aspects compared to that of adolescents born in 1998.

The project aims to reveal knowledge about these aspects and fill an important knowledge gap regarding the long-term mental health effects on adolescents’ achievement and consequences for future life chances, especially for already vulnerable student groups.

The empirical work is based on longitudinal data from a register-based population database and a cohort sequential database with nationally representative samples from two birth cohorts (1998 and 2004) who will be followed from compulsory school to further studies or employment.