Covid-19 Affecting Mental Health - By Jasmin Gonzalez

Covid-19 made a big impact for students and teachers. It has been hard for everyone, with the amount of work and not being able to receive the help needed as they would if in-person.

According to Cambridge University Press the impact that Covid has had on students is unbelievable. “Furthermore, the anticipated increase in mental illness, with potential also for increased suicidality.” They are letting us know that it has caused students to have more suicidal thoughts. As a student myself, I personally think it’s because of the homework being assigned and not receiving the help needed. “With these issues in mind, there has justifiably been calls for increased resourcing of mental health services, along with a collaborative international effort to address issues such as suicide prevention”. This helps us understand that there are more cases of suicidal students, there is more mental health services, and more help that is needed to prevent students from doing this.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ran tests on 41,909 citizens from ages 19-99 for 6 weeks and observed the changes in them. They came to a conclusion that Covid caused people to have more anxiety than usual and suffer from depression. “Using fixed effects regression was used to explore within-person variation over time, cumulative number of worries and experience of adversities were both related to higher levels of anxiety and depression.” This shows an increase in Mental health- related ailments due to the pandemic. “Specific worries relating to finance, access to essentials, personal safety and COVID-19.” Worries of staying sober and safe, trying to prevent getting sick, economical issues, and food issues were always a concern, but worse due to Covid.

Covid has made an impact on the mental health of everyone everywhere, and we need to know how to deal with it the right way. The rates of stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts have increased, and not everyone received the help needed which made it even worse. Some people did not know they needed help. People lost their jobs, they didn’t have a way to provide for themselves and family. People didn’t have much food. The stress of staying clean and sober, and protecting others weighed heavy on people. The thought of being inside for a long period of time causes a lot of anxiety. Because of this, Socio-emotional Learning (SEL) will continue to be implemented next school year. It won’t be like Wellness Wednesday, but it will happen weekly, because people need to take care of their mental health now more than ever.