When China lifted its COVID-19 restrictions, a team of researchers began tracking how college students made sense of the upheaval they had lived through. In a three-wave longitudinal study of 1,155 Chinese college students, followed from approximately 3 to 15 months after the restrictions were removed, the researchers found that benefit finding — the perception of positive outcomes arising from adversity — increased linearly over time, while depressive and anxiety symptoms declined over the same period.
The study, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, analyzed the data using parallel-process latent growth curve modeling, a statistical approach that estimates both the starting level of each variable and its rate of change across the three measurement waves, and allows researchers to test how those growth factors relate to one another. The design made it possible to distinguish between students’ initial levels of benefit finding and the pace at which that benefit finding rose during the recovery period.
Alongside benefit finding, the researchers measured two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, as well as social connectedness, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms. Social connectedness also increased linearly over the follow-up period, mirroring the rise in benefit finding, while the two symptom measures decreased.
The associations between the psychosocial resources and the benefit finding trajectories were not uniform. But reappraisal was negatively associated with the benefit finding slope, indicating a slower subsequent increase over time. Expressive suppression, by contrast, was not significantly associated with either growth factor.
Social connectedness showed stronger associations with the benefit finding trajectories than either of the emotion regulation variables, suggesting that the students’ sense of connection to others may have been the more closely coupled resource during this recovery window.
Benefit finding itself was negatively associated with both depressive and anxiety symptoms at both the intercept and slope levels. In other words, students with higher initial benefit finding reported fewer symptoms at the start of the follow-up, and the growth patterns of benefit finding and the two symptom domains moved in opposing directions across the measurement period.
The researchers also tested indirect association patterns, examining whether social connectedness was linked to the symptom measures through benefit finding. Using bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals for inference, these indirect pathways were supported for social connectedness and both depressive and anxiety symptoms at the intercept and slope levels, indicating that the association between connectedness and the symptom trajectories ran, at least in part, through benefit finding.
The authors caution that these findings highlight psychosocial resources that merit further study in campus mental health research, but the observational design does not establish causal direction or temporal precedence. Because the data were collected without experimental manipulation, it is not possible to determine from this study whether rising benefit finding caused the decline in symptoms, whether lower symptoms fostered benefit finding, or whether unmeasured factors influenced both.
The study also has scope limits worth noting. The sample consisted of Chinese college students followed during a specific post-pandemic recovery period, so the trajectories may not generalize to other populations, age groups, or phases of the pandemic. The measurement window of roughly 3 to 15 months after restrictions were lifted captures one slice of a longer recovery process, and the three-wave design constrains the complexity of the growth patterns that can be modeled.
It documents that benefit finding did not simply persist after the acute disruption ended but continued to rise, that its trajectory was more strongly coupled with social connectedness than with individual emotion regulation strategies, and that reappraisal’s association with the trajectory was mixed — linked to a higher starting point but a slower climb. For researchers studying student mental health in the aftermath of the pandemic, the results point to connectedness as a resource whose association with both benefit finding and symptom trajectories warrants closer longitudinal attention.
Subject of Research: Longitudinal trajectories of benefit finding and its associations with emotion regulation, social connectedness, depression, and anxiety among Chinese college students after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.
Article Title: Longitudinal trajectories of benefit finding and its associations with emotion regulation, social connectedness, depression, and anxiety among Chinese college students following the removal of COVID-19 restrictions. a multivariate latent growth curve analysis
Article References: Wang, W., Wen, G., Li, D., Liu, X., Guo, R., & Wu, D. (2026). Longitudinal trajectories of benefit finding and its associations with emotion regulation, social connectedness, depression, and anxiety among Chinese college students following the removal of COVID-19 restrictions. a multivariate latent growth curve analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 17, Article 1940327. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1940327
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1940327
Keywords: benefit finding, college students, COVID-19 recovery, emotion regulation, social connectedness, depression, anxiety, latent growth curve modeling, mental health, longitudinal study, China, psychosocial resources
News Source: Glenn Wilkins. (October 29, 2026). Benefit Finding Rose Among Chinese College Students in the 15 Months After COVID-19 Restrictions Lifted. Scienmag.
