Almost immediately after COVID-19 began to spread, and particularly during the 2020 lockdowns, red flags were raised about mental health. Household incomes and day-to-day routines were disrupted, sometimes severely. Connections between friends, family and coworkers were constrained. Questions were raised about how these and other changes could impact mental health problems, particularly during the formative teenage years.
As researchers interested in answering this question, we recently released a report using representative data from 71,001 Utah teens that was collected by the Utah Department of Health
In the end, teens affiliated with a religion were uniformly lower in mental health problems than those not affiliated, having significantly lower depression and significantly fewer suicidal thoughts and attempts (this appeared particularly true for Latter-day Saints and Catholics).
