NewRoFoundation

Jack McCormick dedicated the summer to studying the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on depression and mental health.

McCormick discovered a wide range of studies on how the pandemic impacts mental health, but none that reported mental-health effects as they relate to different demographics.

“I think that the environment plays a lot in the way depression symptoms are expressed,” he said. “I wanted to see what the effect quarantine would have on mental health and how it is expressed differently in different communities.”

To explore that area, he developed a survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a crowdsourcing website, to collect data focusing on different ethnicities, genders and age groups. The survey, which ran from June to July, received more 1,100 responses.

The results of the survey indicated that depression symptoms increased significantly in only Black participants. McCormick believes his findings raise several questions about the pandemic’s impact through a social lens and COVID-19’s effects on distinct demographic groups. He plans on taking his research further.

“Over the course of the next summer, I want to study the actual effects quarantine can have on the brain,” he said. “The Science Research Program has been very helpful because it reinvigorated my love for science and I think that I might look in terms of a career in science.”