Psychological Impact Of COVID-19 On University Students

 ‘I myself a UNIVERSITY STUDENT, feels this and speaks for all as one and here it goes’.

I’m here to discuss the mental health status of the university students and the problems they are facing in the society and the students’s community during this lockdown and also in generally before the pandemic came into the picture.

‘Mental health‘ this is the one thing you should worry about to be happy these days, people are really in the need for mental peace, mainly the teenagers and the ‘UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’.

The educational system shouldn’t just be about the subjects or the syllabus we have. In the meantime do you know what the students have in their heads?

If the educational system would not just be seen grading the student rather consider their talent and letting them do and helping them shine bright in their future, there would be no psychological stress to the student.

Hence students will have an impressive behavior with no illness and having a counselor in the colleges might bring a change and continuous guidance.

The students should undergo a therapy for every 6 months and evaluation for each student to check how their cognition is working.

Mental peace is all we need, hustle hard, but make sure your brain’s empty at the end of the day when we spend time with our families, which we can able to do it now during this quarantine.

Sacrificial – The health care workers, huge respect and big salute to them. Condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in this. Just be happy as we are ALIVE.

Mental Health Of The Teens During Quarantine

The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic started in December 2019, originated from China according to the research and to prevent its spread, measures were taken like this lockdown in India that caused severe disruptions in the daily routines.

As per following the rules and regulations implemented by UNESCO, all the schools and colleges have remained closed from 22nd March, 2020. Many enrolled learners worldwide are now out of education.

For adults with mental health issues, such closures mean a lack of access to the resources they have usually through the universities. Some of the young people lack the mental health support and the support provided through online or mobile phones or through media can be challenging for some people. 

So, coming up to the reality to people of 21st-century teens- the university students, I suppose they needed this quarantine, on the thought of it, just think how was your day? How was your week then? It was a RUSH.

But now they got that time, which wasn’t available earlier. This is a good time to relax but at the same time, they are facing adverse effects like psychological stress developed without their knowing mainly including post-traumatic stress, anger, confusion, boredom, longer quarantine duration, stigma, increase in the anxiety levels, insomnia, low mood, depression, irritability, psychological symptoms, emotional disturbance and exhaustion.

Without our recognition we have severe mood swings, we are happy sometimes and unusually be dull sometimes without any reason. It must have sure happened to everyone, at that time the thoughts created by you in your head are the worst thing to ever happen. That is the over-thinking.

At that time all we should try to do is flashback all your good memories and the good you have done and the best you have got.

The Effect of Social Media on Students

But the teenagers have build up more stress, worrying more about their social media accounts than the actual things that matter. By doing this they are making their life fall apart.

There is, of course, two sides of this social media, one side is good and another one is the bad side. But there should be a limit.

Do not live in there, just remember that your life is waiting for you here and stop proving to the people when you know, who you are, maybe someone here might be wondering to be like you. This will never happen unless and until you leave it behind.

Using more of social media by the students might create more anxiety, low self-esteem, low self-confidence. If you keep on comparing with others, you can never have that peace in your brain.

There’s always a solution for everything, for this, just keep your phones aside and know the limits for your social profiling.

Now social media is about the profile being seen good, even if you are unhappy, making it seen happy for others, but not for themselves. 

Stand up for Yourself and Detox

There are people who asked for a break in their life due to their personal troubles, as we all know it’s not a joke to stand up for yourself in a society like this.

Teenagers do face a lot of judgments on basis of how they dress, eat, walk, smile. Recently some people were telling me about the the face value; how they will judge you by your face’s appearance.

Each people carry themselves in different ways, no one has a right to question them or taunt them. You might not know what they are going through, so keeping our mouths shut can be a solution.

This is the about time to accept our flaws and improve ourselves, our personality, building up ourselves into appreciative character, coming out of the comfort zone, the boundaries you made for yourself, leave that old ‘you’; the ‘you’ that you have created who doubts yourself with low self-esteem and confidence.

This maybe is the detox time in whole whole life.

Don’t toxicate your time by thinking more. While there are the health workers striving hard to save others by keeping theirs in danger and here we here, happy and lucky for ourselves to be able to breathe without any problem and with that spirit we should dispose the negative thoughts from our brain.

Follow your passion and do the things you wanted to do in this time.

Never let this time go to waste. If you want to be lazy, be lazy and binge watch Netflix and all the premiums and eat well and be healthy at the same time but just be happy that COVID-19 gave you time and others sacrificing that time for you. But just think after having your lazy time and lying on the bed and questioning yourself whether it was all worth it or not.

Do all the things you have missed on in your life right from the small things to the huge things that creates a CHANGE, only you are capable of doing it.

Spend Time with your Parents

This generation has called it a fashion to go out every Sunday to a cafe or a bar. To go out for a relief or to enjoy but not to the people that matters. This time can be used to be with them, enjoy your parents’s company.

Spend your time with them, maybe after this you may go out for your higher studies in the future. You may not get the chance to spend time with your parents. Don’t lose the chance, help your mother in the kitchen and your father in fixing things. That feeling is irreplaceable. 

I know how mixed your feelings are or how worthless you feel and how irritated you are with your life. Those are just the thoughts in your brain which are not helping you to take up positivity and how good you have been. At that time, try to think of the good things in your life, look at your parents working hard for you and your future.

Will you let these negative thoughts kill your dreams and theirs?

Is it admissible for your parents? For all the hard work they did all their life?

All these are the thoughts of you in the sentences written in a phase of your life, a chapter too hard to close but it’s just for a period of time. YOU should grow that big in your life

Perks of getting over these things : 

• Do the only thing who always loved but couldn’t because you had a reason you always complained of not having time. But now don’t you have that time? You do.
• Improve your public speaking skills, which will improve your self-confidence. You’ll feel comfortable expressing yourself before others.
• You only know the hidden talent in you, but just let the fear go.
• Find yourself.

Excel in your Profession too

In the time of doing all your side hustles do not forget to excel in your profession unless you want it to be.

Use this time in a productive way. Build something for others. Do something to change your society’s and peoples’s mindsets regarding leading one’s life.

• Improvising your study patterns and developing new schemes and suggesting it to your study community.
• Speaking of the student study community and educational system, as there are online classes conducted by the higher officials, students are lacking the interest and concentration on the online classes but we are thankful for the efforts kept our faculties and teachers.
• In this quarantine, during this lockdown in India as already many social problems, one amongst them is the poverty and now the situation is worst the rate of hunger is increased, so you can go help and save the needy by the daily essentials for their survival and educate them the safety measures of COVID-19 and you follow the measures first.
• I believe that exercises boost mental health and doing workouts is helpful to cheer up the mood.
• ‘RELAX’ – the most crucial step to make your brain happy.
• Don’t stress yourself to do something productive, do it with your whole heart.

As a teenager myself, I can tell you how hard it is for the students during this quarantine but this is not odd, making use of this free time without complaining is what you should do. But you are doing nothing and if you did nothing in this time, you are just making the useless reasons to make excuses. You will never be ready to do anything; maybe procrastination was only your thing.

We, the university students, would like to listen to the online class during this lockdown, but do you think it is easy for everyone?

It is not.

Yes, we agree we have become lazy by constantly using the electronic devices and social media. The point they need to get is what’s the situation of the students who stay in towns with no WiFi. There are students with no WiFi and no smartphones in the villages but they have managed hard to get a rank in the top universities.

But how can the online classes made available to them?

We agree that the classes are useful but what about the network issues? Only 1.5 GB per day for 3 classes a day and what else should we do all day?

We are responsible, not negligent towards the studies but we just need a good way and a proper idea and pattern to make us learn new things. There should be a change in the teaching procedures and the faculties should encourage us with our talent, not by our grades. They should counsel us to shine with our talent.

How many are benefited by these classes?

And yeah by the assignments given, the lockdown has been in effect since 22nd March 2020. With all the shops and bookstores closed, do you think we can manage to buy books and other accessories to read properly?

As there is a pandemic in motion all over the country, we are unlucky to be stuck in our houses. But we have to read and write the assignments from the PDFs format of the textbooks with thousands of pages. Can you do that?

No one can dare to write that many pages.

You may ask us this question that we are always on our phone watching series and texting.

Yes we do. Writing from an online textbook is not an easy task. If we tell the faculty this then they say that’s not their problem.

We are the one who are helpless in the middle. We do appreciate your effort for making us shine and be bright in our life by your various methods, but have you thought about the students who don’t have laptops, smart phones or a good network?

And by making us sit for this long hours, we have literally developed abnormalities in our eyes, back and neck.

Maybe we’ll end up visiting the ophthalmologist or doctor.

Isn’t there should be a psychologist for everyone for a weekly assessment of a student?

Why is there a sudden interest of a psychological impact during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was also there during the normal college days.

All I want to say is mental health is important now during this pandemic also on regular basis giving the importance to mental health? 

Everyone faces trauma in their college time, there should be a counsellor assigned to the college to talk about the students’s thoughts, emotions, feelings, talking out and expressing. Getting a proper counselling can change a person’s behavior, planning some recreational activities in the way of studying and letting us know the importance of knowledge and not to just to finish the portions.

Now-a-days, mental health is at stake, there is pressure build-up for the teenagers and also for the elders. We are the ones who should stand for ourselves and also help others and be there for them when a person needs any kind of help.

We should strive to reduce one’s anxiety levels. We humans should stand for each other, be there for each other and help get over their anxiety levels in this lockdown as a friend and a good wisher. 

Again a big salute to the health care workers and thankful to them to keep us safe and saving the lives at the maximum rate possible.

Wash your hands, maintain hygiene, be healthy, we all are in this together to fight! 

The Corona Virus-19

How’s your mental peace doing?

Please fill this Survey Form

I have done a survey regarding this issue and got several responses from several students around 299 and still counting, we are really looking forward to this, the responses are honest and what the students now feel about the present situation, that is how we really feel and we need you to do take some action and fight for MENTAL PEACE that is what people need now not the money, even if one has the money what if the brains flushed and full? Can money free it? 

PLEASE FILL THE FORM AND SEE THE SUMMARY LATER AND CHECK IT YOURSELF.

Just remember when this is over COVID-19,

It wasn’t the CEO’S or the billionaires who saved us.

It was the JANITORS, NURSES, DOCTORS, COPS, and other HARD WORKERS.

Dikshita Valluru

A physical therapist with mental needs, you’ll know when you read my work.