The COVID-19 pandemic uprooted the lives of many college students throughout the country as they were unexpectedly forced to move home when campuses closed. Many struggled with the adjustment to living with their families full time. But in some cases, LGBTQ+ students had additional concerns and challenges associated with the transition.<\/p>\n
Eva Lefkowitz, professor and head of the department of Human Development and Family Sciences at UConn, investigated the impact of COVID-19 campus closures on LGBTQ+ students. Graduate students Alyssa Clark, Rachael Farina, Veronica Hanna-Walker, Samantha Lawrence, Tracy Walters, and Yuan Zhang had active roles in the conception and execution of the study.<\/p>\n
This project was funded by the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention and Policy (InCHIP) Rapid Response seed funding, which was deployed quickly at the onset of the pandemic to support innovation research on this emerging area of research.<\/p>\n
Lefkowitz\u2019s paper on the team\u2019s findings will be presented as part of a symposium on \u201cIndividual and family functioning in vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d at the Society for Research in Child Development virtual conference in April.<\/p>\n
LGBTQ+ students are generally at higher risk of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Lefkowitz and her team hypothesized that this population may experience additional struggles with these issues when they were unexpectedly sent back to what may be a less-supportive home environment.<\/p>\n
For many LGBTQ+ students, the college environment allows them to express and explore their sexual orientation and\/or gender identity in a supportive space.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in an environment where they can find, sometimes for the first time, people that are like them, from the LGBTQ+ community,\u201d Lefkowitz says.<\/p>\n
LGBTQ+ students may carefully time when they come out to their families so that they would be away at college for several months afterwards. The sudden closures may have thrown these plans off.<\/p>\n
After surveying 455 LGBTQ+ students from 32 universities across the country, Lefkowitz and her team found 90% of respondents reported being more stressed after their campuses closed because of the pandemic. They also indicated significant increases in anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students\u2019 perception is that as a result of the pandemic they experience more stress, anxiety, and depression,\u201d Lefkowitz says.<\/p>\n
An important factor for these changes is the relationship the students have with their parents. If their parents are emotionally supportive and express positive attitudes toward them, the respondents were less likely to experience negative effects on their wellbeing.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the researchers did not find any difference between the reported experiences of LGBTQ+ students who were living with their parents versus those who were not after campuses closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really the relationship with the parents that seems to matter rather than if you\u2019re with them all the time,\u201d Lefkowitz says.<\/p>\n
Lefkowitz and her team are still looking at data from the open-ended questions they asked respondents about whether they changed how they expressed their sexual orientation and\/or gender identity at home versus at college.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just such a range of responses so we\u2019re very excited to analyze that data,\u201d Lefkowitz says.<\/p>\n
Lefkowitz says these findings can be generalized beyond the current pandemic. In a regular academic year, there are multiple, extended breaks which may have similar effects for LGBTQ+ students as the sudden closure this year. Lefkowitz is interested in pursuing a future study that looks at how these regularly scheduled academic breaks affect stress, anxiety, and depression for this population.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat could help universities know what to do not just in the pandemic, but in the day-to-day to support LGBTQ+ students who may not feel very supported at home,\u201d Lefkowitz says.<\/p>\n
Although this is the first study she has done looking at the LGBTQ+ population, Lefkowitz intends to continue to pursue this angle in future research.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the research out there is on the risks for this population,\u201d Lefkowitz says. \u201cThis study has gotten me more interested in understanding strengths in the LGBTQ+ population and what is linked to thriving for this population.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lefkowitz holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include sexual health across adolescence and the transition to adulthood, LGBTQ+ college students\u2019 wellbeing, romantic relationship development, communication about sexuality and other health topics, and sexual violence prevention. <\/em><\/p>\n Follow UConn Research on<\/em> Twitter<\/em><\/a> &<\/em> LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Support from parents is a key indicator of whether LGTBQ+ college students are experiencing higher levels of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":168288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2213,2076,2235,2225,2306],"tags":[2251,80],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-168287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-coronavirus","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices","tag-coronavirus","tag-research"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 07:59:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168287"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168543,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168287\/revisions\/168543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/168288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168287"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=168287"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=168287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}