How community-based mentoring supported youth well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic

DuBois, D. L., Herrera, C., & Kelly, S. W. (2026). An investigation of personal and social-contextual resources as mediators of the influence of duration of COVID-19 pandemic exposure and mentoring program participation on the mental health and well-being of adolescents. Behavioral Sciences, 16(10), 1857. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16101857

Summarized by Emily Buss

About the Study

Youth mental health was declining before COVID-19, and the pandemic made things worse for many adolescents. One explanation is that the pandemic disrupted the resources that normally support young people’s well-being, such as coping skills, hopeful expectations for the future, support from family and friends, and involvement in organized activities. Mentoring programs could, in theory, help in 2 ways. They might benefit youth regardless of what is happening around them (a promotive role), or they might protect youth against the harms of the pandemic (a buffering role). Few studies have been in a position to test these possibilities.

This study drew on a randomized controlled trial of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) community-based mentoring program. Youth enrolled between February 2018 and February 2020 and were assessed at baseline and again 18 months later. About half of the youth completed their 18-month follow-up before the pandemic began and the rest completed it afterward, which gave the researchers a naturally occurring way to study pandemic exposure. They measured exposure as the number of months after March 15, 2020 that had passed by each youth’s follow-up.

The final sample included 1,353 youth with an average age of 12.3 (62.7% male, 38.7% Black, 30.2% Hispanic/Latine, and 24.2% White), and 73.2% lived in households below or within $5,000 of the federal poverty line. Of these youth, 1,011 were assigned to the mentoring program and 342 to a control group that became eligible for a match after the 4-year study period. The researchers looked at change in 2 sets of resources. Personal resources included measures such as self-control, social skills, coping efficacy, grit, self-advocacy, and hopeful future expectations. Social-contextual resources included perceived support from family, friends, and a significant other, family functioning, supportive parenting, out-of-school activities, and volunteering. Mental health and well-being combined self-esteem, positive affect, and life satisfaction. Structural equation modeling was used to test whether pandemic exposure and mentoring were linked to changes in mental health through these resources.

Key Findings

The pandemic took a toll on resources. Youth with longer pandemic exposure showed declines in both personal and social-contextual resources, and these declines were, in turn, linked to less favorable change in mental health and well-being.

Mentoring strengthened personal resources. Youth assigned to the BBBSA program showed gains in personal resources relative to the control group, and these gains were linked to improvements in mental health and well-being. The total indirect effect of mentoring was about one-tenth of a standard deviation over 18 months. Mentoring was not significantly associated with change in social-contextual resources.

A partial offset. The benefits of mentoring only partly offset the effects of the pandemic. For example, the authors estimated that 12 months of exposure corresponded to an indirect decline of about 0.16 standard deviations, which was larger than the estimated benefit of mentoring.

No evidence of buffering. Mentoring did not interact with pandemic exposure, meaning that the program’s benefits were similar regardless of how long youth had been exposed. The pathways also generally did not differ for boys and girls, although girls showed less favorable change in mental health and well-being than boys overall.

Programs adapted. Among youth assigned to mentoring, longer pandemic exposure was linked to a lower likelihood of being matched by the 18-month follow-up and to shorter match duration. Among matches that were active during the pandemic, parents reported that 33.5% met in person, 35.6% met online, and 49.0% communicated by phone.

“These limitations notwithstanding, the findings of this research remain significant as evidence of the benefits that community-based prevention programs can still have for youth during periods of social disruption even when those same programs may themselves be influenced and forced to adapt to the disruption that is taking place.” (DuBois et al., 2026, Discussion)

Implications for Mentoring

The findings suggest that community-based mentoring programs can continue to benefit youth during periods of major social disruption, even as the programs themselves are forced to adapt. The benefits worked mainly through personal resources such as coping, goal pursuit, and hope for the future, so programs may want to be intentional about supporting these skills in their mentor training and activities. At the same time, the effects were modest, they did not fully offset the toll of the pandemic, and mentoring did not lessen the effect of exposure itself. The authors note that even relatively small benefits could add up when programs reach large numbers of youth. The drop in matching during the pandemic also suggests that keeping the pipeline of new matches moving, including through flexible meeting formats, may be a priority for programs during future crises.

The authors point to several limitations. Resources and mental health were measured at the same time point, so the study cannot fully establish that changes in resources came before changes in well-being. There were no individual measures of the stress youth and families experienced during the pandemic. At least one-third of youth assigned to mentoring had not been matched by follow-up, which means the estimates may understate the benefits of mentoring that youth actually received. The tests for buffering also had limited statistical power, so the absence of a buffering effect should not be treated as strong evidence that one does not exist. Finally, the pandemic coincided with other major events, including the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd, which may have also shaped youth well-being.