# Mood trajectories showing resilience and recovery in young people during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

## TL;DR

This study tracks mood changes in young people during and after the pandemic, finding different recovery patterns and factors linked to resilience.

## Contribution

The study identifies distinct mood trajectory profiles and their associated risk and protective factors in youth during the pandemic.

## Key findings

- 16% of youth showed high negative mood impact with slow recovery during the pandemic.
- Two groups showed stable low to moderate mood levels throughout the pandemic.
- Academic stress and executive functioning problems were linked to worse mood outcomes.

## Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected daily life of young people but not all youth were affected in the same way. We studied mood trajectories in 363 young people (10–29 years) in the Rotterdam area in the Netherlands across eight longitudinal waves spanning four years to test for resilience and recovery profiles during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A four-class model using growth mixture modelling confirmed that some adolescents were highly affected with slow recovery (16%), some were moderately affected (27%), and there were two patterns of stable low to moderate mood level groups (24% and 33% respectively). Those that were highly affected in negative mood were characterized by more academic stress, more executive functioning problems, and lower sense of belonging. The same factors were predictive and protective for recovery trends of vigor. These results confirm that group averages do not fully capture the variability within adolescence and unravel protective factors that may guide future interventions in case of a new crisis.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-39808-6.