Impact of Covid 19 Lockdown on Mental Health of Youth Attending Educational Institutions in Thimphu, Bhutan

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has brought about a sense of fear and anxiety around the globe. This phenomenon has led to short term as well as long term psychosocial and mental health implications for children and adolescents. Lockdown and quarantine approaches completely changed students' learning methods. It has completely shifted students' learning system from face to face learning to online learning with students being isolated and maintaining social distance which could have an impact on their mental health. The lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic may have exacerbated mental health problems in the school going students. We collected prospective data on students’ mental health in two instances: (i) students were asked to answer questions related to lockdown experience and (ii) Generalized Anxiety Disorder test was done asking students questions related to anxiety over the last two weeks prior to the study. A total of 403 high school students in Thimphu aged 18 and above completed socio-demographic questionnaires, fifteen questions related to the mental health set up by the researcher and generalized anxiety disorder GAD-7. We applied multiple regression models to evince any changes in the aforementioned questionnaire scores after lockdown with respect to the scores during lockdown. The study findings showed that being abandoned by teachers, feeling distanced from friends, feeling loneliness during lockdown during lockdown, thought of harming themselves and worrying about exams and studies are the contributing factors that lead to the development of mental health symptoms in the students during the covid 19 lockdown. This study supports the view that depressive symptomatology may be aggravated during lockdown but reduced after lockdown and students reported on average worse depressive symptoms during lockdown and students are more likely to have anxiety after the lockdown is lifted.