During covid and quarantine, the world went through a crisis. Losing jobs, not being able to see family or friends, etc., resulted in many feeling their mental health going downhill. Loneliness and very limited social interaction, to back to normal-ish society and life in three years is not something that is managed well by anyone. Symptoms relating to anxiety and depression are the main mental health results of the pandemic and have not been taken lightly. March 12th, 2020; was the last day with no masks and no idea of what was about to come next. For me, that included the cycle of depression and anxiety, quarantine was about to cause.
December 2019 was the start of the covid jokes. Every time someone in class would cough everyone would give the standard response of “ouuuu someone has Covid.” But of course, now it’s not a joke anymore, it’s serious. “Someone in China ate a bat,” was the main ‘fact’ and famous google search at the time. Throughout the beginning of 2020, there was a mixture of nervousness and not caring, from all those around me.
Continuous worry and stress resulted at the beginning of my anxiety. I had to deal with events from my family members dying, my work ethic declining, to spending my time learning how to make whipped coffee and matcha drinks. I was worried about the gyms closing and me not being able to make money at my job if this whole covid thing were to become serious. This may sound like a common thing occurring in people’s lives today (and probably still when you are reading this). Going from being a “work hard, play hard” type student, I fell into a spiral that occurred of waking up late and procrastinating my assignments. The hard part was not living through quarantine but the after-effects of it. In my senior year (current), life has felt as if I was a freshman all over again learning how to handle a bunch of classes with the benefit of college preparation and standardized testing. While I was worried about my own issues throughout this time, the rest of the world knew that this pandemic would be a great time to figure out the statistics of these feelings. In the UK, questions on these topics were administered in the first six weeks of lockdown making even the beginning of lockdown a period where symptoms of a mental health crisis were growing. Over 20% of those who took the survey, showed symptoms of anxiety but later decreased through the waves. Men showed much fewer symptoms of depression (at 17%) than women (at 33%). I wasn’t the only one struggling with this crisis.
When learning that others research facilities took interest in this topic, I wondered if my own classmates and friends silently struggled with the same. When surveying fifty students in the combined junior and senior class (16-18-year-olds), the most common symptoms were anxiety and depression. Twenty questions on a variety of situations during quarantine and slightly after were asked. Such as, “when starting online school, how did your grades fluctuate, and what resulted in this increase or decrease?” All these questions were formatted to be answered in free response to having more detail and variety to determine results. High school students seemed to have been affected much more percentage-wise with a 20% increase in depression and anxiety symptoms. Other than depression and anxiety, many students suffered from a loss of motivation and social skills. Coming back to school felt to many as if they were “starting school all over again and learning how to talk to people,” Amya Khan (12th grade) stated. Many students described their time during quarantine as a change-in lifestyle that affected them long-term. Those who did not feel a big difference during or after covid (about 5%) reported struggling with at least a short-time lack of social skills when coming back to in-person school. For example, having conversations with a group of people or approaching a stranger. As more people have been struggling with symptoms of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc., more and more have come to the realization that this is a real thing that should be taken seriously. Over 20% of those who took the survey showed symptoms of anxiety but later decreased through the waves. Men showed much fewer depression symptoms (at 17%) than women (at 33%). These ‘people’ include those of all ages, teens, adults, etc. No one is exempt from their mental health or can avoid symptoms their whole life without its own consequences. Many got help during covid and after have been healing but there are still many others suffering from the same or similar who have not been a part of these surveys or do not realize what those symptoms could mean. For those reading this hundred years from now, know this, covid was not as bad for me as it was for many others around me. For others it ruined them; many lost their whole families, lost their money, lost their life, etc. Quarantine changed me, and I want to believe it was for a reason but honestly, I’m not sure. It’s been complicated.
