College Students’ Coping, Resilience, Well-Being, Academic Experiences, and Help-Seeking Attitudes During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a major disruption to the lives of college students, impacting their well-being and academic experiences. This two-point, longitudinal study (Wave 2 N = 286) investigated how the pandemic impacted college students, how students coped, and how their resilience and coping profiles were associated with their well-being, academic performance, and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Latent Profile Analyses showed that students’ coping profiles changed after the pandemic started. Compared to Active Copers—those who used more active coping strategies during the pandemic, (a) Withdrawal Copers had poorer academic performance and reported lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction, more loneliness, and less favorable help-seeking attitudes; and (b) Undifferentiated Copers reported lower levels of happiness, more loneliness, and less favorable help-seeking attitudes. Using the convergent mixed-methods design and a combination of person- and variable-centered approaches, our findings have important implications for practice, advocacy, education, training, and future research.