LGBTQ+ Youth Face Increased Anxiety Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

While a life-altering pandemic has caused a substantial uptick in anxiety and depression symptoms among adults and children alike, LGBTQ+ youth have turned to peers in anonymous online discussion forums for support. New research from UC Davis suggests these LGBTQ+ teenagers — who already experience disproportionate levels of psychological adversity — exhibited increased anxiety on the popular r/LGBTeens subreddit throughout 2020 and the start of 2021.

Psychology of a Pandemic

Researchers study the social and emotional toll of sheltering in place, and ways people cope.

After COVID-19 precautions shut down the campus last spring  — and with it most UC Davis laboratories — psychology professors turned their research upside down and shifted focus, fast.

Social scientists, in particular Professor of Psychology Paul Hastings, recognized the unprecedented human “experiment” presented by the pandemic and global efforts to “bend the curve.”

Brain Molecule Identified as Key in Anxiety Model

Boosting a single molecule in the brain can change “dispositional anxiety,” the tendency to perceive many situations as threatening, in nonhuman primates, researchers from UC Davis, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found. The molecule, neurotrophin-3, stimulates neurons to grow and make new connections. The finding provides hope for new strategies focused on intervening early in life to treat people at risk for anxiety disorders, depression and related substance abuse. Current treatments work for only a subset of people and often only partially relieve symptoms. 

Oxytocin and Anxiety

New research by UC Davis behavioral neuroscientists suggests oxytocin may have different effects in men and women—and in certain circumstances the hormone may actually trigger anxiety.