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.
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Data availability
The datasets used in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Code can be found on Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.18494671).
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Funding
This research is supported by the Muller Foundation, a named fund at the Erasmus Trustfonds and Convergence | Healthy Start, a program of the Convergence Alliance – Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Erasmus Medical Center - to improve the future of new generations.
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Y.J.T wrote the main the manuscript. E.A.C. contributed to the conceptualization and initial draft of the manuscriptY.J.T., S.W.S, L.W.B, M.F., and K.H.G. contributed to data collection. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Toenders, Y.J., Green, K.H., te Brinke, L.W. et al. Mood trajectories showing resilience and recovery in young people during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-39808-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-39808-6
