Covid-19 – understanding its impacts
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Covid-19 – understanding its impacts
The COVID-19 is in a pandemic situation all over the world right now, due to which people are challenged with many unexpected crises in their lives. Mostly all the continents are in a lockdown position, where the population is asked to stay at home, maintain social distancing and do the preventive tasks (eg., washing hands) as much as possible to take a toll in the outbreak of COVID-19. Therefore, this lockdown period is resulting in a huge change in people’s lifestyles and is creating degradation in the quality of life. It is equally affecting the physical as well as the mental health of everyone.
Thoughts and Emotions on Covid-19
While talking about mental health, the two most important factors which arise in this domain is our thought and emotion. Whenever we are faced with any stress (that can be a challenge or a threat), the appraisal of the stressful situation does not come alone. It is accompanied by our overwhelming emotions (Ruth, Brunel & Otnes, 2002). In this ongoing lockdown period, the two most debilitating thoughts and emotions which dominated my mind were:
Thoughts:
- Sense of apprehension (the worst-case scenario): Watching news and information from social media regarding the mortality rates all over the world resulted in a sense of apprehension in me. It let me apprehend about the worst-case scenario of my life, where I, as well as my loved, may get affected with COVID-19. Losing my loved ones or thoughts about my death and the reactions of my loved ones haunted me. This resulted in disturbed sleep, and my sleep-wake patterns got altered.
- Thoughts about the future: While fighting with the very first thought, I somehow could find a way of coping with it. But the all over fight with my mind was not over yet. The second thought was as distressing as the first one popped-up in my mind. It was about future survival after the COVID-19 suspends as it is seen that due to the heavy outbreak and long-term lockdown period, the percentage of unemployment has risen. Thus my second thought was about my career prospects and future job.
Emotions:
- Fear of uncertainty: The above-mentioned thoughts were accompanied by this emotion. A deep fear of uncertainty (i.e., what will happen next, will I survive or not, if I lose my loved ones) was dominating my mind.
- Low mood: Feeling sad was also accompanied by the already mentioned thoughts and emotions. Staying at home is quite, though, when there is no escape to the thought that ‘I have nothing to do,’ ‘when can I meet my friends or my significant loved ones’. Therefore, the feelings of uncertainty simply resulted in feelings of sadness.
Coping Strategies for emotional distress
The evaluation or the thinking about my thoughts and emotions made me realize that none of those had any positive connotation within them. Therefore, the practice of self-reflection and meta-cognition gives us insight regarding our very own thoughts and emotions and helps regulate us to cope better with any stressful situation (Qiu et. al., 2020). There are several kinds of coping strategies one can use to combat the emotional distress caused due to COVID-19, mentioned as follows:
- Not to overwhelm oneself with too much information: Though it is important to stay updated in this current demanding situation. But as the information is mostly negative, updating one with too much of it may affect mental health. It can create fear of uncertainty, anxiety, and panic. Therefore, noting the relevant information regarding COVID-19 as well as updating oneself with other news besides this can help fight the crisis.
- Need to stay in contact: The lockdown period is very challenging as there is no way of recreation, hanging out with buddies, or going on a vacation with the loved ones. Therefore, staying connected over the phone, text, or video call with the loved ones can help one to cope with the crisis of staying at home. Sharing the thoughts or overwhelming emotions with loved ones can definitely help to maintain a balance in our mental health.
- Scheduling and maintaining a routine: Staying back at home results in lethargy. People spend hours browsing their phones, and household chores, as well as office or college assignments, are left untouched. It further creates distress and disturbs mental health balance. Therefore, scheduling a day can help in time management and also can eradicate a sense of ‘nothing to do’ in us.
- Practise of positivity, Yoga, or Exercise: Maintaining our physical health reflects its magic in our mental health. Thirty minutes of jogging in our lawn, or practicing some basic yoga and breathing exercises can help refresh our mind.
- Listening to music: Listening to any soft, soothing, or our favorite music can make our mind happy and refreshed. And if one can sing, then we should definitely sing our favorite song anytime a day to soothe our minds.
- Time for self-care: As we can get some extra time even beyond our all chores are done in this lockdown period. We should dedicate it to our self-care religiously.
Challenges and Benefits of Open Book exam
Due to lockdown, the college or university examinations which used to be held in paper-pencil mode is now taking place in the “open book” method of examination. Here the students have access to their study materials during the examination. But it does come with its challenges as well as benefits.
Challenges:
- As the students may go unprepared, searching for answers in the texts, books, or notes they carry can be very time-consuming. Therefore, the students suffer from running out of time and fail to complete the paper.
- As the students can have the study materials with them during examinations, they are taking the concept of examination very lightly, being very overconfident. This, in turn, is resulting in poor knowledge regarding the subject, which can negatively affect their job prospect later in life.
- As the examinations are taken lightly by the students, they do not attend the classes properly. The problem-solving capacities, logical analysis, or reasoning capacities of the students are degrading.
Benefits:
- It does not require much time, studying the huge syllabus. During the examination, the students can refer to their texts for the correct answers. Students can get more marks and can achieve more. The low achievers can make more marks, and their feelings of inadequacy can somewhat be overcome (Gharib, Phillips & Mathew, 2012).
- It lessens exam anxiety. As the students do not need to memorize the facts, therefore, anxiety regarding forgetting the studied materials is less. Referring to the texts or books can help them answer the questions which they have forgotten. The students feel less burdened regarding their headache to study and achieve good marks in the examinations.
- In case subjects of core sciences like engineering, physics, statistics, and finance, the students do not need to mug up the mathematical formulae. They can refer to them easily from books. But in these subjects, as the questions are generally concept-based, the students need to do an in-depth study, which increases their curiosity as well. In-depth studying instead of superficial studying helps in the enhancement of problem-solving capacities and logical reasoning.
Reference
Gharib, A., Phillips, W., & Mathew, N. (2012). Cheat Sheet or Open-Book? A Comparison of the Effects of Exam Types on Performance, Retention, and Anxiety. Online Submission, 2(8), 469-478.
Qiu, J., Shen, B., Zhao, M., Wang, Z., Xie, B., & Xu, Y. (2020). A nationwide survey of psychological distress among Chinese people in the COVID-19 epidemic: implications and policy recommendations. General Psychiatry, 33(2).
Ruth, J. A., Brunel, F. F., & Otnes, C. C. (2002). Linking thoughts to feelings: investigating cognitive appraisals and consumption emotions in a mixed-emotions context. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 30(1), 44-58.