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The COVID-19 pandemic led to a shutdown of universities in Germany. In a longitudinal design, we compared mental health (depression, anxiety, somatic complaints) of university students in Germany before (June to August 2019) and in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (June 2020) and determined the impact of pandemic-related stress and loneliness on students’ mental health in self-report online surveys. We investigated 443 participants (mean age 22.8 years), among them 77% female, and 10.4% medical students. A small increase of depression mean scores was observed ( F (1,420) = 5.21;  p  = .023), anxiety and somatic complaints have not significantly changed. There was a medium increase in loneliness from pre-pandemic scores to the pandemic situation ( F (1,423) = 30.56;  p  < .001). Analyzed with regression analyses, current loneliness and pre-pandemic distress represented the strongest associations with mental health during the pandemic. Additionally, health-related concerns during the pandemic were associated with symptoms of depression [ b  = 0.21; 95%CI(0.08; 0.34);  t  = 3.12;  p  = .002], anxiety [ b  = 0.07; 95%CI(0.01; 0.12);  t  = 2.50;  p  = .013], somatic complaints [ b  = 0.33; 95%CI(0.18; 0.47);  t  = 4.49;  p  < .001], and loneliness [ b  = 0.10; 95%CI(0.03; 0.17);  t  = 2.74;  p  = .006]. Social stress due to the pandemic situation was associated with loneliness [ b  = 0.38; 95%CI(0.32; 0.45);  t  = 11.75;  p  < .001]. The results imply that university students represent a risk group for psychosocial long-term ramifications of the pandemic.

The impact of lockdown stress and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health among university students in Germany