The Psychological Wellbeing of University Students Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic: A scoping review, systematic review and a meta-analysis

This review aims to summarize the current evidence relating to university students’ psychological wellbeing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A scoping review using PRISMA-ScR guideline (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) was first conducted to determine if the evidence can be systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed. The search was executed via Google Scholar (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA), MEDLINE/PubMed (US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, USA), Science Direct (Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Scopus (Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA). A total of 90 original articles were selected for the scoping review. Meta-analysis of a total of 46284 cases revealed an overall pooled prevalence rate for anxiety symptoms was 29.1% [95% CI: 20.9, 39.0] (K=9, N=22357), and 23.2% [95% CI: 15.7, 32.9] (K=12, N=23927) for depression symptoms. COVID-19 had a significant impact on university students' psychological wellbeing. Keywords: Adolescents; Psychological distress; Mental health; Pandemic; nCov; SARS-COV-2