The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had a far-reaching impact on the U.S. population and disproportionately affected race-ethnic minorities, individuals living in or near poverty, and those living in large urban areas. Based on past literature, it was expected that COVID-19-related stressors would have large negative effects on mental health, but the understanding of how social and economic factors might moderate those effects was still unclear.

The supplement added time-sensitive data by collecting real-time online surveys of both target young adults and their parents (n=1,200) in a representative sample of a disadvantaged population. To better understand how major stressors, like the COVID-19 pandemic, were moderated, the study assessed social, occupational, economic, health, and mental health impacts as they occurred, across different cities/states (with varying pandemic policies) and among those most at risk for poor outcomes: low-income and minority families, as well as young adults showing disparities in infection and mortality. By adding this critical, time-sensitive assessment, the research was better positioned to understand how adversity shaped the ongoing development of RDoC threat and reward circuits and to assess how COVID-19 impacted mental health in marginalized, low-income, minority populations. Additionally, the study documented how resilience factors, including social support, economic policies, and family resources, moderated the negative effects of COVID-19-related stressors on mental health.

This work built on the parent grant's focus to use data-driven analytics and hypothesis testing to validate multilevel-multimodal models of Threat and Reward constructs in an existing representative longitudinal cohort at risk for psychopathology and to examine how a history of exposure to adversity linked to these domains. The parent grant assessed 600 young adults twice (at ages 20 and 24) from The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), an ongoing study of 4,900 children born between 1998 and 2000 in large U.S. cities.

Attributes of the FFCWS included:

• Parents and children were surveyed and assessed at birth, 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years.
• The sample was nationally representative.
• There was substantial enrichment for low-income families (median income-to-needs ratio = 1.4) and minority families (66%), populations often under-represented in research.
• Participants were entering early adulthood, a period of heightened risk for psychopathology.