Voice to youths: a qualitative study on pandemic experience in young adults

Recent studies found that young adults reported high levels of anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 outbreak (Carlucci et al., 2020), thus they have been designed as a vulnerable group at high risk of developing psychological disorders (Mazza et al., 2020). The study aims to explore young adults' (18-35 years old) pandemic experience and at the same time to “give voice” to young people, providing them a space for listening and reflection, in which the narrative reconstruction of “their” pandemic could activate a process of signification of their experience (Margherita, 2009). This exploratory and qualitative study is the first step of the research and it was preparatory to the second step, that is a quantitative study. The participants were 23 young adults aged between 18 and 30 years old (M = 24.73, SD = 2.5). A team of psychologists conducted semi-structured interviews that dealt with the 3 phases of the pandemic (lockdown; summer 2020; II wave autumn-winter '20-'21). The following areas were investigated: emotional experience, concerns, resources, obstacles, relationships with adults, relationship with the media and relationship with the future. The interviews were analyzed with the IPA method (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Smith et al., 1999), that identifies the core dimensions, that were read in psychodynamic ways. The core dimensions that emerged from the analysis included: a traumatic connotation of the pandemic experience ("The impossible in a very short time"); an increased anguish in the second pandemic wave compared to the lockdown period ("things were better when times were harder"); control as a defense when facing powerlessness ("I control... therefore I am and will be"). The study allowed to define the construct and the dimensions which will be analysed in the second quantitative step. Moreover, the feedbacks received suggest that the interviews provided an opportunity to re-signify the experience of the pandemic