Art 3170 Civic Engagement: Social Issues "Action" Project
Welcome to the ARt 3170 blog created as apart of the civic engagement requirement of this course. In this blog, students will identify social issues that affect them and their communities. After conducting brief research on the issue and sharing their personal feelings, students will locate members of their communities who are also affected by the same social issue.
Covid-19 Psychological distress among College Students
By Francisco X. Canada
What is "Psychological Distress"?
When we think about physiological distress, some believe it the same as our mental health. In a sense, those who think of this are right; our mental health does have something to do with our psychological distress, but physiological distress is much more severe. In Health eUniveristy, they explain psychological distress is when an individual is facing stress in their life for a while, which at one point, you feel overwhelmed by this distress. This overwhelming distress can sometimes overshadow your daily life, affecting you in several ways. However, what causes this sort of psychological distress?
Causes of Psycholifcla Distress
Psychological distress happened when you are faced with stressors that you are unable to cope with. This stressor can be:
- traumatic experiences
- major life events
- everyday stressors such as workplace stress, family stress, and relationships
- health issues
Covid-19 Psychological Distress
We are living during a time where we have to fight against a pandemic. We have to keep ourselves safe and try to live through this pandemic as it's our daily livelihood now. However, it's not that easy for a lot of people. This livelihood isn't for everyone because there are many barriers that one must overcome to have an everyday daily life. One of the communities that have a hard time during this pandemic are college students. College students were one of the many communities that were affected by Covid-19. Although they may not be the most at risk of catching the covid-19, there are other impacts that Covid-19 has brought to college students. With the rapid surge of Covid-19, schools were being shut down, affecting many students psychologically.
With the rapid surge of Covid-19, many students had to adapt to their new livelihood. However, these new obstacles that many college students have to overcome aren't that easy. According to Son et al. (2020), in their study, they found that college students face many stressors due to Covid-19. Many of these stressors are caused by the fear and worry for oneself or loved ones, constraints on physical movement and social activities due to quarantine, and sudden and radical lifestyle changes. Therefore, as time went by with the new social distancing and stay at home law, many other stressors would appear among college student. It is not that easy for a college student to face these stressors alone. Son et al. (2020) also found that as time went on, being locked up at home made some students develop other stressors such as stressors include infection fears, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, and financial loss. With time these stressors become psychological distress because they overshadow individuals' livelihood, restraining them from doing anything. The amount of psychological distress built from these stressors can drive anyone to go insane or depressed.
Son et al. (2020) conducted a survey study on 195 university students who found that many of these stressors students were affected drastically. They found that 91% of students were stress out of fear and worry about catching Covid-19. At the same time, another 43% were worried about their families and relatives who were vulnerable to Covid-19. In addition, 82% of students showed high stress and concerns for their academic performance being impacted by the pandemic; 38% of the participant saw that online school was going to be a challenge for them. While 44% of participants had depressive thoughts due to loneliness, concerns about academic performance, and 38% of students to homicidal thoughts due to depressive thoughts.
While many students are psychologically distressed over the student change and hardship of copping due to Covid-19. Another area that many college students are stressing over is the student change over online learning. Hasan & Bao (2020) found that out of 400 college students, the transition from the physical classroom to online teaching has negatively impacted college students, one of the significant consequences of psychological distress. The stressors due to online learning are unequal learning opportunities because some students are poor and cannot afford to have resources to do online school, leading many college students to stress out if they can do school with limited resources. Online schools can be accessible to some, but it's a barrier to accessing education because they don't have the resources to access online learning. Hasan & Bao (2020) found a strong correlation between college student psychological distress and online learning. They found college students suffer psychological distress because of the main reasons:
What these three factors mean is that online learning or e-learning has had a huge impact on college students. Hasan & Bao (2020) conclude that the three factors have a strong correlation with one another, causing a college student to feel psychological distress because of online learning difficulties or the loss of an academic year.
Why does it matter to ME
In the end, the reason why this whole covid-19 psychological distress matters to me is because it's not easy to do school when you're stressed. I'm a senior in Criminal Justice, so I already have some previous stress from school because of graduation and classes. With the pandemic it closed, quite a few option classes in the criminal justice course made it harder to acquire classes before it got full. Many professors may not know how to move their course onto online learning, so some teachers decide to close the course for the semester. This puts a lot of stress on me because sometimes those classes are a requisite that I need to graduate in time. Moving onto online learning made it harder for me since I live with my family; I have two sisters who also do school work, so the internet reception is awful since multiple people are using the internet. The pandemic has just kept on adding so many problems to my life that sometimes I don't know what to do. I know that the best way to relive strees to socialize or go for a walk, but I can't do any of that because I don't want to go outside and by the slight chance catch the virus. Also, I don't want to get sick because I don't want to infect my mom because she has a heart condition that I don't want to make her life worse. Therefore, I'm stuck in my house, worrying if I will graduate on time and be concerned about my parent's health.
Reference
Hasan, N., & Bao, Y. (2020). Impact of “e-Learning crack-up” perception on psychological distress among college students during COVID-19 pandemic: A mediating role of “fear of academic year loss”. Children and Youth Services Review, 118, 105355. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105355
Son, C., Hegde, S., Smith, A., Wang, X., & Sasangohar, F. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on College Students’ Mental Health in the United States: Interview Survey Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(9). doi:10.2196/21279
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