# Prospective predictors of risk and resilience trajectories of mental health in US youth during COVID-19

> **NIH NIH R21** · CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA · 2024 · $222,500

## Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial effects on youth in multiple aspects of life, raising concern about
its impact on youth mental health. Indeed, mounting data suggest that youth depression and anxiety rates have
increased compared to the pre-pandemic era. A key challenge is to recognize prospective predictors that can
help identify youth at risk for serious mental health sequelae following COVID-19 and to disentangle the factors
that contribute to resilient trajectories. Resilience, often defined as an adaptive outcome (i.e., low symptoms
levels) following adversity, is driven by multiple systems including individual- and structural-level environmental
factors, neurocognitive traits, and genetic factors. One approach to study resilience is to identify inter-individual
variation in mental health trajectories following the pandemic, and use data collected prospectively before and
early in the pandemic to better understands what determines variability in mental health trajectories under stress.
The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N~12,000, 52% male, recruited at age 9-10
years, 20% Black) follows diverse US youth longitudinally since 2017. The study collected multidimensional
(i.e., environment, clinical, neurocognitive, genetic) data before the pandemic, and participants were ~12-13
years old when the pandemic hit. Between May 2020 to June 2021, the study team collected data on mental
health and on COVID-19 related exposures at multiple time points from ~9,500 participants and will continue
following participants into late adolescence. Therefore, ABCD Study creates a unique opportunity to
disentangle risk and resilience factors collected prospectively in youth who were in early-mid adolescence
when the pandemic hit, a critical developmental window when stress related disorders become more prevalent.
In the current project, we propose to leverage the multi-dimensional ABCD Study data to identify factors that
contribute to variability in mental health trajectories in US youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will first use
latent growth mixture modeling to identify trajectories of internalizing symptoms over time. Thereafter, we will
characterize the individual stressors and the structural (based on geocoded address) environmental exposures-
before and early in the pandemic- that contribute to trajectories of risk and resilience (Aim 1). In addition, we will
leverage the deep phenotyping that was conducted pre-COVID-19 to identify clinical and neurocognitive risk and
resilience factors (Aim 2). Lastly, we will explore whether participants' genetic information (i.e., polygenic risk for
psychiatric disorders) can help explain variability in mental health trajectories during the pandemic (Aim 3). The
proposed research will identify what factors contribute to resilience (i.e., resilience factors); and who will show
risk or resilience trajectory in response to chronic (pandemic-imposed) stress. The study addresses key gaps
tha...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10837705
- **Project number:** 5R21MH130797-02
- **Recipient organization:** CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Ran Barzilay
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $222,500
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-08-01 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10837705

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10837705, Prospective predictors of risk and resilience trajectories of mental health in US youth during COVID-19 (5R21MH130797-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10837705. Licensed CC0.

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