Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns on the education and mental health of physiotherapy students in France: a descriptive cross-sectional study with national online survey.
Arnaud Delafontaine, Gabriel Saiydoun, Maxime Vallée and 5 others
PMID 38197514WHAT IT FOUND
French physiotherapy students reported high rates of depression, anxiety and insomnia during the pandemic.
Final-year students were most affected, with 63% reporting depression and 58% insomnia, alongside perceptions that training quality had decreased.
Key findings
01Approximately 63% of participants reported experiencing depression, 58.10% reported insomnia, and 32% reported moderate to severe anxiety.
02Upper-year students, particularly those in their final year, tended to be more anxious than students in lower years.
0384% of students believed that the quality of their physiotherapy studies decreased during the COVID-19 period.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study design is cross-sectional, so it cannot establish causality between the pandemic and mental health outcomes. Recall bias is possible because the first lockdown was not evaluated directly at the time but retrospectively. Self-reported data may be subject to social desirability bias. The sample slightly overrepresented females (68.8%) compared to the national student population (59.54%), which may bias findings on gender differences. Suicide risk was not assessed due to time constraints.
Declared interests
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the high rates of depression and anxiety as evidence that the pandemic caused these conditions. This is a cross-sectional survey that reports associations at a single point in time, not a longitudinal study tracking changes in mental health.