(PS1-A17) Educating During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Effect of Return-to-learn Teaching Plans on Depression and Anxiety

The COVID-19 pandemic has deleteriously impacted physical and mental health. Throughout the pandemic, educators continued to work and faced risk of COVID-19 exposure. In the summer of 2020, return-to-learn plans were prepared by school districts across the United States in advance of the fall semester when students returned to school. The plans included three categories -- virtual, hybrid, and fully in-person plans. Research indicates that educators at the K-12 level were at risk for depression and anxiety prior to the pandemic, so examining the impact of COVID-19 on educator mental health is important. The present study investigated associations between the return-to-learn plans and internalizing symptoms in U.S. educators, and we hypothesized that teaching in-person (either full-time or hybrid) would be associated with greater depressive and social anxiety symptoms. Participants included 853 U.S. educators from the Pre-K to college in November and December of 2020. Participation occurred via Qualtrics, a secure survey platform, and participants completed occupational questions and the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms (IDAS-II). Subscales from the IDAS-II used in the analyses include General Depression and Social Anxiety. Raw scores were converted to T-scores based on the published national norms of adults in the United States (Nelson et al., 2017). The median T-scores in our sample were well above the normative mean for both General Depression (Median = 81) and Social Anxiety (Median = 67). Published clinical cutoffs (Stasik et al., 2018) indicated that 18.6% of this sample was likely to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Two one-way ANOVAs examined between-group differences in return-to-learn plan (virtual, hybrid, in-person) across depression and social anxiety. Results showed no significant differences between return-to-learn plans in depressive (F(2, 753) = 0.37, p </em>= 0.69) or social anxiety (F(2, 772) = 0.26, p </em>= 0.78) symptoms, when controlling for age and gender. Results also showed no significant differences in depressive (F(2, 680) = 0.77, p </em>= 0.46) or social anxiety (F(2, 695) = 0.50, p </em>= 0.61) symptoms in terms of return-to-learn plans when additionally controlling for COVID-19 case rates in counties. Findings suggested that many are experiencing clinically significant levels of depressive symptoms, and symptoms were elevated relative to national norms. Future research should investigate potential mitigating factors, as well as effective interventions for the workplace. Further characterization of needs expressed by educators will be an important contribution to future intervention efforts.