Young adult mental health during the United Kingdom’s first COVID-19 lockdown: the benefit of living with parents and siblings

Young adults in the UK saw sharp declines in their mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines whether living with siblings helped moderate this negative effect. We compare the outcomes of young adults (age 19), who were i) living with parents and siblings with ii) those who were living with only parents and with iii) those who lived away from the parental home. Data comes from the Millennium Cohort Study COVID-19 survey. We link this data with pre-COVID information, collected when participants were aged 17 (N = 2,578). Two measures of mental health are used: the Shortened Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, and the Kessler-6 Psychological Distress scale. As young men and women may be differently affected by the presence of siblings at home, we allow the effect of living arrangements on mental health to vary by gender. While average young adult mental health deteriorated during the first national lockdown, there were variations by gender and living arrangements. For young men, living with siblings was associated with improved mental well-being, and lower levels of psychological distress during the first COVID-19 lockdown. In contrast, for young women, living with parents was associated with lower levels of psychological distress than living away from home, but siblings provided no additional benefit. Data from later in the pandemic suggests that the importance of family living arrangement declined as lockdowns eased and young adults became more accustomed to pandemic related social restrictions.