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Challenges and Opportunities in the Post-COVID-19 World

The COVID-19 crisis has affected societies and economies around the globe and will permanently reshape our world as it continues to unfold. While the fallout from the crisis is both amplifying familiar risks and creating new ones, change at this scale also creates new openings for managing systemic challenges, and ways to build back better. This collection of essays draws on the diverse insights of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report Advisory Board to look ahead and across a broad range of issues – trade, governance, health, labour, technology to name a few – and consider where the balance of risk and opportunity may come out. It offers decision-makers a comprehensive picture of expected long-term changes, and inspiration to leverage the opportunities this crisis offers to improve the state of the world.

World Economic Forum reports may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License , and in accordance with our Terms of Use .

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The COVID-19 pandemic is not a break for nature – let’s make sure there is one after the crisis

Nature is facing increased pressure due COVID-19 crisis – and to our health and our economy, governments must also prioritize healing our planet, too.

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the way people deal with them. A qualitative longitudinal study

Contributed equally to this work with: Dominika Maison, Diana Jaworska, Dominika Adamczyk, Daria Affeltowicz

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology

• Dominika Maison, 
• Diana Jaworska, 
• Dominika Adamczyk, 
• Daria Affeltowicz

• Published: October 11, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

The conducted qualitative research was aimed at capturing the biggest challenges related to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews were carried out in March-June (five stages of the research) and in October (the 6 th stage of the research). A total of 115 in-depth individual interviews were conducted online with 20 respondents, in 6 stages. The results of the analysis showed that for all respondents the greatest challenges and the source of the greatest suffering were: a) limitation of direct contact with people; b) restrictions on movement and travel; c) necessary changes in active lifestyle; d) boredom and monotony; and e) uncertainty about the future.

Citation: Maison D, Jaworska D, Adamczyk D, Affeltowicz D (2021) The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the way people deal with them. A qualitative longitudinal study. PLoS ONE 16(10): e0258133. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133

Editor: Shah Md Atiqul Haq, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, BANGLADESH

Received: April 6, 2021; Accepted: September 18, 2021; Published: October 11, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Maison et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files ( S1 Dataset ).

Funding: This work was supported by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Poland from the funds awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the form of a subsidy for the maintenance and development of research potential in 2020 (501-D125-01-1250000). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), discovered in December 2019 in China, has reached the level of a pandemic and, till June 2021, it has affected more than 171 million people worldwide and caused more than 3.5 million deaths all over the world [ 1 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic as a major health crisis has caught the attention of many researchers, which has led to the creation of a broad quantitative picture of human behavior during the coronavirus outbreak [ 2 – 4 ]. What has been established so far is, among others, the psychological symptoms that can occur as a result of lockdown [ 2 ], and the most common coping strategies [ 5 ]. However, what we still miss is an in-depth understanding of the changes in the ways of coping with challenges over different stages of the pandemic. In the following study, we used a longitudinal qualitative method to investigate the challenges during the different waves of the coronavirus pandemic as well as the coping mechanisms accompanying them.

In Poland, the first patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 on the 4 th March 2020. Since then, the number of confirmed cases has grown to more than 2.8 million and the number of deaths to more than 73,000 (June 2021) [ 1 ]. From mid-March 2020, the Polish government, similarly to many other countries, began to introduce a number of restrictions to limit the spread of the virus. These restrictions had been changing from week to week, causing diverse reactions in people [ 6 ]. It needs to be noted that the reactions to such a dynamic situation cannot be covered by a single study. Therefore, in our study we used qualitative longitudinal research in order to monitor changes in people’s emotions, attitudes, and behavior. So far, few longitudinal studies have been carried out that investigated the various issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, all of them were quantitative [ 7 – 10 ]. The qualitative approach (and especially the use of enabling and projective techniques) allows for an in-depth exploration of respondents’ reactions that goes beyond respondents’ declarations and captures what they are less aware of or even unconscious of. This study consisted of six stages of interviews that were conducted at key moments for the development of the pandemic situation in Poland. The first stage of the study was carried out at the moment of the most severe lockdown and the biggest restrictions (March 2020) and was focused on exploration how did people react to the new uncertain situation. The second stage of the study was conducted at the time when restrictions were extended and the obligation to cover the mouth and nose everywhere outside the household were introduced (middle of April 2020) and was focused at the way how did people deal with the lack of family gatherings over Easter. The third stage of the study was conducted at the moment of announcing the four stages of lifting the restrictions (April 2020) and was focused on people’s reaction to an emerging vision of getting back to normalcy. The fourth stage of the study was carried out, after the introduction of the second stage of lifting the restrictions: shopping malls, hotels, and cultural institutions were gradually being opened (May 2020). The fifth stage of the study was conducted after all four stages of restriction lifting were in place (June 2020). Only the obligation to cover the mouth and nose in public spaces, an order to maintain social distance, as well as the functioning of public places under a sanitary regime were still in effect. During those 5 stages coping strategies with the changes in restrictions were explored. The sixth and last stage of the study was a return to the respondents after a longer break, at the turn of October and November 2020, when the number of coronavirus cases in Poland began to increase rapidly and the media declared “the second wave of the pandemic”. It was the moment when the restrictions were gradually being reintroduced. A full description of the changes occurring in Poland at the time of the study can be found in S1 Table .

The following study is the first qualitative longitudinal study investigating how people cope with the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic at its different stages. The study, although conducted in Poland, shows the universal psychological relations between the challenges posed by the pandemic (and, even more, the restrictions resulting from the pandemic, which were very similar across different countries, not only European) and the ways of dealing with them.

Literature review

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global health crisis with severe economic [ 11 ], social [ 3 ], and psychological consequences [ 4 ]. Despite the fact that there were multiple crises in recent years, such as natural disasters, economic crises, and even epidemics, the coronavirus pandemic is the first in 100 years to severely affect the entire world. The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic concern an impending global recession caused by the lockdown of non-essential industries and the disruption of production and supply chains [ 11 ]. Social consequences may be visible in many areas, such as the rise in family violence [ 3 ], the ineffectiveness of remote education, and increased food insecurity among impoverished families due to school closures [ 12 ]. According to some experts, the psychological consequences of COVID-19 are the ones that may persist for the longest and lead to a global mental health crisis [ 13 ]. The coronavirus outbreak is generating increased depressive symptoms, stress, anxiety, insomnia, denial, fear, and anger all over the world [ 2 , 14 ]. The economic, social, and psychological problems that people are currently facing are the consequences of novel challenges that have been posed by the pandemic.

The coronavirus outbreak is a novel, uncharted situation that has shaken the world and completely changed the everyday lives of many individuals. Due to the social distancing policy, many people have switched to remote work—in Poland, almost 75% of white-collar workers were fully or partially working from home from mid-March until the end of May 2020 [ 15 ]. School closures and remote learning imposed a new obligation on parents of supervising education, especially with younger children [ 16 ]. What is more, the government order of self-isolation forced people to spend almost all their time at home and limit or completely abandon human encounters. In addition, the deteriorating economic situation was the cause of financial hardship for many people. All these difficulties and challenges arose in the aura of a new, contagious disease with unexplored, long-lasting health effects and not fully known infectivity and lethality [ 17 ]. Dealing with the situation was not facilitated by the phenomenon of global misinformation, called by some experts as the “infodemic”, which may be defined as an overabundance of information that makes it difficult for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance [ 18 ]. Studies have shown that people have multiple ways of reacting to a crisis: from radical and even violent practices, towards individual solutions and depression [ 19 ]. Not only the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic but also the ways of reacting to it and coping with it are issues of paramount importance that are worth investigating.

The reactions to unusual crisis situations may be dependent on dispositional factors, such as trait anxiety or perceived control [ 20 , 21 ]. A study on reactions to Hurricane Hugo has shown that people with higher trait anxiety are more likely to develop posttraumatic symptoms following a natural disaster [ 20 ]. Moreover, lack of perceived control was shown to be positively related to the level of distress during an earthquake in Turkey [ 21 ]. According to some researchers, the COVID-19 crisis and natural disasters have much in common, as the emotions and behavior they cause are based on the same primal human emotion—fear [ 22 ]. Both pandemics and natural disasters disrupt people’s everyday lives and may have severe economic, social and psychological consequences [ 23 ]. However, despite many similarities to natural disasters, COVID-19 is a unique situation—only in 2020, the current pandemic has taken more lives than the world’s combined natural disasters in any of the past twenty years [ 24 ]. It needs to be noted that natural disasters may pose different challenges than health crises and for this reason, they may provoke disparate reactions [ 25 ]. Research on the reactions to former epidemics has shown that avoidance and safety behaviors, such as avoiding going out, visiting crowded places, and visiting hospitals, are widespread at such times [ 26 ]. When it comes to the ways of dealing with the current COVID-19 pandemic, a substantial part of the quantitative research on this issue focuses on coping mechanisms. Studies have shown that the most prevalent coping strategies are highly problem-focused [ 5 ]. Most people tend to listen to expert advice and behave calmly and appropriately in the face of the coronavirus outbreak [ 5 ]. Problem-focused coping is particularly characteristic of healthcare professionals. A study on Chinese nurses has shown that the closer the problem is to the person and the more fear it evokes, the more problem-focused coping strategy is used to deal with it [ 27 ]. On the other hand, a negative coping style that entails risky or aggressive behaviors, such as drug or alcohol use, is also used to deal with the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic [ 28 ]. The factors that are correlated with negative coping include coronavirus anxiety, impairment, and suicidal ideation [ 28 ]. It is worth emphasizing that social support is a very important component of dealing with crises [ 29 ].

Scientists have attempted to systematize the reactions to difficult and unusual situations. One such concept is the “3 Cs” model created by Reich [ 30 ]. It accounts for the general rules of resilience in situations of stress caused by crises, such as natural disasters. The 3 Cs stand for: control (a belief that personal resources can be accessed to achieve valued goals), coherence (the human desire to make meaning of the world), and connectedness (the need for human contact and support) [ 30 ]. Polizzi and colleagues [ 22 ] reviewed this model from the perspective of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The authors claim that natural disasters and COVID-19 pandemic have much in common and therefore, the principles of resilience in natural disaster situations can also be used in the situation of the current pandemic [ 22 ]. They propose a set of coping behaviors that could be useful in times of the coronavirus outbreak, which include control (e.g., planning activities for each day, getting adequate sleep, limiting exposure to the news, and helping others), coherence (e.g., mindfulness and developing a coherent narrative on the event), and connectedness (e.g., establishing new relationships and caring for existing social bonds) [ 22 ].

Current study

The issue of the challenges arising from the current COVID-19 pandemic and the ways of coping with them is complex and many feelings accompanying these experiences may be unconscious and difficult to verbalize. Therefore, in order to explore and understand it deeply, qualitative methodology was applied. Although there were few qualitative studies on the reaction to the pandemic [e.g., 31 – 33 ], they did not capture the perception of the challenges and their changes that arise as the pandemic develops. Since the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is very dynamic, the reactions to the various restrictions, orders or bans are evolving. Therefore, it was decided to conduct a qualitative longitudinal study with multiple interviews with the same respondents [ 34 ].

The study investigates the challenges arising from the current pandemic and the way people deal with them. The main aim of the project was to capture people’s reactions to the unusual and unexpected situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the project was largely exploratory in nature. Interviews with the participants at different stages of the epidemic allowed us to see a wide spectrum of problems and ways of dealing with them. The conducted study had three main research questions:

• What are the biggest challenges connected to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions?
• How are people dealing with the pandemic challenges?
• What are the ways of coping with the restrictions resulting from a pandemic change as it continues and develops (perspective of first 6 months)?

The study was approved by the institutional review board of the Faculty of Psychology University of Warsaw, Poland. All participants were provided written and oral information about the study, which included that participation was voluntary, that it was possible to withdraw without any consequences at any time, and the precautions that would be taken to protect data confidentiality. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. To ensure confidentiality, quotes are presented only with gender, age, and family status.

The study was based on qualitative methodology: individual in-depth interviews, s which are the appropriate to approach a new and unknown and multithreaded topic which, at the beginning of 2020, was the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the need to observe respondents’ reactions to the dynamically changing situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, longitudinal study was used where the moderator met on-line with the same respondent several times, at specific time intervals. A longitudinal study was used to capture the changes in opinions, emotions, and behaviors of the respondents resulting from the changes in the external circumstances (qualitative in-depth interview tracking–[ 34 ]).

The study took place from the end of March to October 2020. Due to the epidemiological situation in the country interviews took place online, using the Google Meets online video platform. The audio was recorded and then transcribed. Before taking part in the project, the respondents were informed about the purpose of the study, its course, and the fact that participation in the project is voluntary, and that they will be able to withdraw from participation at any time. The respondents were not paid for taking part in the project.

Participants.

In total, 115 interviews were conducted with 20 participants (6 interviews with the majority of respondents). Two participants (number 11 and 19, S2 Table ) dropped out of the last two interviews, and one (number 6) dropped out of the last interview. The study was based on a purposive sample and the respondents differed in gender, age, education, family status, and work situation (see S2 Table ). In addition to demographic criteria intended to ensure that the sample was as diverse as possible, an additional criterion was to have a permanent Internet connection and a computer capable of online video interviewing. Study participants were recruited using the snowball method. They were distant acquaintances of acquaintances of individuals involved in the study. None of the moderators knew their interviewees personally.

A total of 10 men and 10 women participated in the study; their age range was: 25–55; the majority had higher education (17 respondents), they were people with different professions and work status, and different family status (singles, couples without children, and families with children). Such diversity of respondents allowed us to obtain information from different life perspectives. A full description of characteristics of study participants can be found in S2 Table .

Each interview took 2 hours on average, which gives around 240 hours of interviews. Subsequent interviews with the same respondents conducted at different intervals resulted from the dynamics of the development of the pandemic and the restrictions introduced in Poland by the government.

The interviews scenario took a semi-structured form. This allowed interviewers freely modify the questions and topics depending on the dynamics of the conversation and adapt the subject matter of the interviews not only to the research purposes but also to the needs of a given respondent. The interview guides were modified from week to week, taking into account the development of the epidemiological situation, while at the same time maintaining certain constant parts that were repeated in each interview. The main parts of the interview topic guide consisted of: (a) experiences from the time of previous interviews: thoughts, feeling, fears, and hopes; (b) everyday life—organization of the day, work, free time, shopping, and eating, etc.; (c) changes—what had changed in the life of the respondent from the time of the last interview; (d) ways of coping with the situation; and (e) media—reception of information appearing in the media. Additionally, in each interview there were specific parts, such as the reactions to the beginning of the pandemic in the first interview or the reaction to the specific restrictions that were introduced.

The interviews were conducted by 5 female interviewers with experience in moderating qualitative interviews, all with a psychological background. After each series of interviews, all the members of the research teams took part in debriefing sessions, which consisted of discussing the information obtained from each respondent, exchanging general conclusions, deciding about the topics for the following interview stage, and adjusting them to the pandemic situation in the country.

Data analysis.

All the interviews were transcribed in Polish by the moderators and then double-checked (each moderator transcribed the interviews of another moderator, and then the interviewer checked the accuracy of the transcription). The whole process of analysis was conducted on the material in Polish (the native language of the authors of the study and respondents). The final page count of the transcript is approximately 1800 pages of text. The results presented below are only a portion of the total data collected during the interviews. While there are about 250 pages of the transcription directly related to the topic of the article, due to the fact that the interview was partly free-form, some themes merge with others and it is not possible to determine the exact number of pages devoted exclusively to analysis related to the topic of the article. Full dataset can be found in S1 Dataset .

Data was then processed into thematic analysis, which is defined as a method of developing qualitative data consisting of the identification, analysis, and description of the thematic areas [ 35 ]. In this type of analysis, a thematic unit is treated as an element related to the research problem that includes an important aspect of data. An important advantage of thematic analysis is its flexibility, which allows for the adoption of the most appropriate research strategy to the phenomenon under analysis. An inductive approach was used to avoid conceptual tunnel vision. Extracting themes from the raw data using an inductive approach precludes the researcher from imposing a predetermined outcome.

As a first step, each moderator reviewed the transcripts of the interviews they had conducted. Each transcript was thematically coded individually from this point during the second and the third reading. In the next step, one of the researchers reviewed the codes extracted by the other members of the research team. Then she made initial interpretations by generating themes that captured the essence of the previously identified codes. The researcher created a list of common themes present in all of the interviews. In the next step, the extracted themes were discussed again with all the moderators conducting the coding in order to achieve consistency. This collaborative process was repeated several times during the analysis. Here, further superordinate (challenges of COVID-19 pandemic) and subordinate (ways of dealing with challenges) themes were created, often by collapsing others together, and each theme listed under a superordinate and subordinate category was checked to ensure they were accurately represented. Through this process of repeated analysis and discussion of emerging themes, it was possible to agree on the final themes that are described below.

Main challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Challenge 1 –limitation of direct contact with people . The first major challenge of the pandemic was that direct contact with other people was significantly reduced. The lockdown forced many people to work from home and limit contact not only with friends but also with close family (parents, children, and siblings). Limiting contact with other people was a big challenge for most of our respondents, especially those who were living alone and for those who previously led an active social life. Depending on their earlier lifestyle profile, for some, the bigger problem was the limitation of contact with the family, for others with friends, and for still others with co-workers.

I think that because I can’t meet up with anyone and that I’m not in a relationship , I miss having sex , and I think it will become even more difficult because it will be increasingly hard to meet anyone . (5 . 3_ M_39_single) . The number In the brackets at the end of the quotes marks the respondent’s number (according to Table 1 ) and the stage of the interview (after the dash), further is information about gender (F/M), age of the respondent and family status. Linguistic errors in the quotes reflect the spoken language of the respondents.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133.t001

Changes over time . Over the course of the 6 months of the study, an evolution in the attitudes to the restriction of face-to-face contact could be seen: from full acceptance, to later questioning its rationale. Initially (March and April), almost all the respondents understood the reasons for the isolation and were compliant. At the beginning, people were afraid of the unknown COVID-19. They were concerned that the tragic situation from Italy, which was intensively covered in the media, could repeat itself in Poland (stage 1–2 of the study). However, with time, the isolation started to bother them more and more, and they started to look for solutions to bypass the isolation guidelines (stage 3–4), both real (simply meeting each other) and mental (treating isolation only as a guideline and not as an order, perceiving the family as being less threatening than acquaintances or strangers in a store). The turning point was the long May weekend that, due to two public holidays (1 st and 3 rd May), has for many years been used as an opportunity to go away with family or friends. Many people broke their voluntary isolation during that time encouraged by information about the coming loosening of restrictions.

During the summer (stage 5 of the survey), practically no one was fully compliant with the isolation recommendations anymore. At that time, a growing familiarity could be observed with COVID-19 and an increasing tendency to talk about it as “one of many diseases”, and to convince oneself that one is not at risk and that COVID-19 is no more threatening than other viruses. Only a small group of people consciously failed to comply with the restrictions of contact with others from the very beginning of the pandemic. This behavior was mostly observed among people who were generally less anxious and less afraid of COVID-19.

I’ve had enough. I’ve had it with sitting at home. Okay, there’s some kind of virus, it’s as though it’s out there somewhere; it’s like I know 2 people who were infected but they’re still alive, nothing bad has happened to anyone. It’s just a tiny portion of people who are dying. And is it really such a tragedy that we have to be locked up at home? Surely there’s an alternative agenda there? (17.4_F_35_Adult and child)

Ways of dealing . In the initial phase, when almost everyone accepted this restriction and submitted to it, the use of communication platforms for social meetings increased (see Ways of dealing with challenges in Table 1 ) . Meetings on communication platforms were seen as an equivalent of the previous face-to-face contact and were often even accompanied by eating or drinking alcohol together. However, over time (at around stage 4–5 of the study) people began to feel that such contact was an insufficient substitute for face-to-face meetings and interest in online meetings began to wane. During this time, however, an interesting phenomenon could be seen, namely, that for many people the family was seen as a safer environment than friends, and definitely safer than strangers. The belief was that family members would be honest about being sick, while strangers not necessarily, and—on an unconscious level—the feeling was that the “family is safe”, and the “family can’t hurt them”.

When it became clear that online communication is an insufficient substitute for face-to-face contacts, people started to meet up in real life. However, a change in many behaviors associated with meeting people is clearly visible, e.g.: refraining from shaking hands, refraining from cheek kissing to greet one another, and keeping a distance during a conversation.

I can’t really say that I could ‘feel’ Good Friday or Holy Saturday. On Sunday, we had breakfast together with my husband’s family and his sister. We were in three different places but we connected over Skype. Later, at noon, we had some coffee with my parents, also over Skype. It’s obvious though that this doesn’t replace face-to-face contact but it’s always some form of conversation. (9.3_F_25_Couple, no children)

Challenge 2 –restrictions on movement and travel . In contrast to the restrictions on contact with other people, the restrictions on movement and the closing of borders were perceived more negatively and posed bigger challenges for some people (especially those who used to do a lot of travelling). In this case, it was less clear why these regulations were introduced (especially travel restrictions within the country). Moreover, travel restrictions, particularly in the case of international travels, were associated with a limitation of civil liberties. The limitation (or complete ban) on travelling abroad in the Polish situation evoked additional connotations with the communist times, that is, with the fact that there was no freedom of movement for Polish citizens (associations with totalitarianism and dictatorship). Interestingly, the lack of acceptance of this restriction was also manifested by people who did not travel much. Thus, it was not just a question of restricting travelling abroad but more of restricting the potential opportunity (“even if I’m not planning on going anywhere, I know I still can”).

Limitations on travelling around the country were particularly negatively felt by families with children, where parents believe that regular exercise and outings are necessary for the proper development of their children. For parents, it was problematic to accept the prohibition of leaving the house and going to the playground (which remained closed until mid-May). Being outdoors was perceived as important for maintaining immunity (exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle), therefore, people could not understand the reason underlying this restriction and, as a consequence, often did not accept it.

I was really bothered by the very awareness that I can’t just jump in my car or get on a plane whenever I want and go wherever I want. It’s not something that I have to do on a daily basis but freedom of movement and travelling are very important for me. (14.2_M_55_Two adults and children)

Changes over time . The travel and movement limitations, although objectively less severe for most people, aroused much greater anger than the restrictions on social contact. This was probably due to a greater sense of misunderstanding as to why these rules were being introduced in the first place. Moreover, they were often communicated inconsistently and chaotically (e.g., a ban on entering forests was introduced while, at the same time, shopping malls remained open and masses were allowed to attend church services). This anger grew over time—from interview to interview, the respondents’ irritation and lack of acceptance of this was evident (culminating in the 3 rd -4 th stage of the study). The limitation of mobility was also often associated with negative consequences for both health and the economy. Many people are convinced that being in the open air (especially accompanied by physical activity) strengthens immunity, therefore, limiting such activity may have negative health consequences. Some respondents pointed out that restricting travelling, the use of hotels and restaurants, especially during the holiday season, will have serious consequences for the existence of the tourism industry.

I can’t say I completely agree with these limitations because it’s treating everything selectively. It’s like the shopping mall is closed, I can’t buy any shoes but I can go to a home improvement store and buy some wallpaper for myself. So I don’t see the difference between encountering people in a home improvement store and a shopping mall. (18.2_F_48_Two adults and children)

Ways of dealing . Since the restriction of movement and travel was more often associated with pleasure-related behaviors than with activities necessary for living, the compensations for these restrictions were usually also from the area of hedonistic behaviors. In the statements of our respondents, terms such as “indulging” or “rewarding oneself” appeared, and behaviors such as throwing small parties at home, buying better alcohol, sweets, and new clothes were observed. There were also increased shopping behaviors related to hobbies (sometimes hobbies that could not be pursued at the given time)–a kind of “post-pandemic” shopping spree (e.g., a new bike or new skis).

Again, the reaction to this restriction also depended on the level of fear of the COVID-19 disease. People who were more afraid of being infected accepted these restrictions more easily as it gave them the feeling that they were doing something constructive to protect themselves from the infection. Conversely, people with less fears and concerns were more likely to rebel and break these bans and guidelines.

Another way of dealing with this challenge was making plans for interesting travel destinations for the post-pandemic period. This was especially salient in respondents with an active lifestyle in the past and especially visible during the 5 th stage of the study.

Today was the first day when I went to the store (due to being in quarantine after returning from abroad). I spent loads of money but I normally would have never spent so much on myself. I bought sweets and confectionery for Easter time, some Easter chocolates, too. I thought I’d do some more baking so I also bought some ingredients to do this. (1.2_ F_25_single)

Challenge 3 –necessary change in active lifestyle . Many of the limitations related to COVID-19 were a challenge for people with an active lifestyle who would regularly go to the cinema, theater, and gym, use restaurants, and do a lot of travelling. For those people, the time of the COVID constraints has brought about huge changes in their lifestyle. Most of their activities were drastically restricted overnight and they suddenly became domesticated by force, especially when it was additionally accompanied by a transition to remote work.

Compulsory spending time at home also had serious consequences for people with school-aged children who had to confront themselves with the distance learning situation of their children. The second challenge for families with children was also finding (or helping find) activities for their children to do in their free time without leaving the house.

I would love to go to a restaurant somewhere. We order food from the restaurant at least once a week, but I’d love to go to the restaurant. Spending time there is a different way of functioning. It is enjoyable and that is what I miss. I would also go to the cinema, to the theater. (13.3_M_46_Two adults and child.)

Changes over time . The nuisance of restrictions connected to an active lifestyle depended on the level of restrictions in place at a given time and the extent to which a given activity could be replaced by an alternative. Moreover, the response to these restrictions depended more on the individual differences in lifestyle rather than on the stage of the interview (except for the very beginning, when the changes in lifestyle and everyday activities were very sudden).

I miss that these restaurants are not open . And it’s not even that I would like to eat something specific . It is in all of this that I miss such freedom the most . It bothers me that I have no freedom . And I am able to get used to it , I can cook at home , I can order from home . But I just wish I had a choice . (2 . 6_F_27_single ).

Ways of dealing . In the initial phase of the pandemic (March-April—stage 1–3 of the study), when most people were afraid of the coronavirus, the acceptance of the restrictions was high. At the same time, efforts were made to find activities that could replace existing ones. Going to the gym was replaced by online exercise, and going to the cinema or theater by intensive use of streaming platforms. In the subsequent stages of the study, however, the respondents’ fatigue with these “substitutes” was noticeable. It was then that more irritation and greater non-acceptance of certain restrictions began to appear. On the other hand, the changes or restrictions introduced during the later stages of the pandemic were less sudden than the initial ones, so they were often easier to get used to.

I bought a small bike and even before that we ordered some resistance bands to work out at home, which replace certain gym equipment and devices. […] I’m considering learning a language. From the other online things, my girlfriend is having yoga classes, for instance. (7.2_M_28_Couple, no children)

Challenge 4 –boredom , monotony . As has already been shown, for many people, the beginning of the pandemic was a huge change in lifestyle, an absence of activities, and a resulting slowdown. It was sometimes associated with a feeling of weariness, monotony, and even of boredom, especially for people who worked remotely, whose days began to be similar to each other and whose working time merged with free time, weekdays with the weekends, and free time could not be filled with previous activities.

In some way, boredom. I can’t concentrate on what I’m reading. I’m trying to motivate myself to do such things as learning a language because I have so much time on my hands, or to do exercises. I don’t have this balance that I’m actually doing something for myself, like reading, working out, but also that I’m meeting up with friends. This balance has gone, so I’ve started to get bored with many things. Yesterday I felt that I was bored and something should start happening. (…) After some time, this lack of events and meetings leads to such immense boredom. (1.5_F_25_single)

Changes over time . The feeling of monotony and boredom was especially visible in stage 1 and 2 of the study when the lockdown was most restrictive and people were knocked out of their daily routines. As the pandemic continued, boredom was often replaced by irritation in some, and by stagnation in others (visible in stages 3 and 4 of the study) while, at the same time, enthusiasm for taking up new activities was waning. As most people were realizing that the pandemic was not going to end any time soon, a gradual adaptation to the new lifestyle (slower and less active) and the special pandemic demands (especially seen in stage 5 and 6 of the study) could be observed.

But I see that people around me , in fact , both family and friends , are slowly beginning to prepare themselves for more frequent stays at home . So actually more remote work , maybe everything will not be closed and we will not be locked in four walls , but this tendency towards isolation or self-isolation , such a deliberate one , appears . I guess we are used to the fact that it has to be this way . (15 . 6_M_43_Two adults and child) .

Ways of dealing . The answer to the monotony of everyday life and to finding different ways of separating work from free time was to stick to certain rituals, such as “getting dressed for work”, even when work was only by a computer at home or, if possible, setting a fixed meal time when the whole family would gather together. For some, the time of the beginning of the pandemic was treated as an extra vacation. This was especially true of people who could not carry out their work during the time of the most severe restrictions (e.g., hairdressers and doctors). For them, provided that they believed that everything would return to normal and that they would soon go back to work, a “vacation mode” was activated wherein they would sleep longer, watch a lot of movies, read books, and generally do pleasant things for which they previously had no time and which they could now enjoy without feeling guilty. Another way of dealing with the monotony and transition to a slower lifestyle was taking up various activities for which there was no time before, such as baking bread at home and cooking fancy dishes.

I generally do have a set schedule. I begin work at eight. Well, and what’s changed is that I can get up last minute, switch the computer on and be practically making my breakfast and coffee during this time. I do some work and then print out some materials for my younger daughter. You know, I have work till four, I keep on going up to the computer and checking my emails. (19.1_F_39_Two adults and children)

Challenge 5 –uncertainty about the future . Despite the difficulties arising from the circumstances and limitations described above, it seems that psychologically, the greatest challenge during a pandemic is the uncertainty of what will happen next. There was a lot of contradictory information in the media that caused a sense of confusion and heightened the feeling of anxiety.

I’m less bothered about the changes that were put in place and more about this concern about what will happen in the future. Right now, it’s like there’s these mood swings. […] Based on what’s going on, this will somehow affect every one of us. And that’s what I’m afraid of. The fact that someone will not survive and I have no way of knowing who this could be—whether it will be me or anyone else, or my dad, if somehow the coronavirus will sneak its way into our home. I simply don’t know. I’m simply afraid of this. (10.1_F_55_Couple, no children)

Changes over time . In the first phase of the pandemic (interviews 1–3), most people felt a strong sense of not being in control of the situation and of their own lives. Not only did the consequences of the pandemic include a change in lifestyle but also, very often, the suspension of plans altogether. In addition, many people felt a strong fear of the future, about what would happen, and even a sense of threat to their own or their loved ones’ lives. Gradually (interview 4), alongside anxiety, anger began to emerge about not knowing what would happen next. At the beginning of the summer (stage 5 of the study), most people had a hope of the pandemic soon ending. It was a period of easing restrictions and of opening up the economy. Life was starting to look more and more like it did before the pandemic, fleetingly giving an illusion that the end of the pandemic was “in sight” and the vision of a return to normal life. Unfortunately, autumn showed that more waves of the pandemic were approaching. In the interviews of the 6 th stage of the study, we could see more and more confusion and uncertainty, a loss of hope, and often a manifestation of disagreement with the restrictions that were introduced.

This is making me sad and angry. More angry, in fact. […] I don’t know what I should do. Up until now, there was nothing like this. Up until now, I was pretty certain of what I was doing in all the decisions I was making. (14.4_M_55_Two adults and children)

Ways of dealing . People reacted differently to the described feeling of insecurity. In order to reduce the emerging fears, some people searched (sometimes even compulsively) for any information that could help them “take control” of the situation. These people searched various sources, for example, information on the number of infected persons and the number of deaths. This knowledge gave them the illusion of control and helped them to somewhat reduce the anxiety evoked by the pandemic. The behavior of this group was often accompanied by very strict adherence to all guidelines and restrictions (e.g., frequent hand sanitization, wearing a face mask, and avoiding contact with others). This behavior increased the sense of control over the situation in these people.

A completely opposite strategy to reducing the feeling of uncertainty which we also observed in some respondents was cutting off information in the media about the scale of the disease and the resulting restrictions. These people, unable to keep up with the changing information and often inconsistent messages, in order to maintain cognitive coherence tried to cut off the media as much as possible, assuming that even if something really significant had happened, they would still find out.

I want to keep up to date with the current affairs. Even if it is an hour a day. How is the pandemic situation developing—is it increasing or decreasing. There’s a bit of propaganda there because I know that when they’re saying that they have the situation under control, they can’t control it anyway. Anyhow, it still has a somewhat calming effect that it’s dying down over here and that things aren’t that bad. And, apart from this, I listen to the news concerning restrictions, what we can and can’t do. (3.1_F_54_single)

Discussion and conclusions

The results of our study showed that the five greatest challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic are: limitations of direct contact with people, restrictions on movement and travel, change in active lifestyle, boredom and monotony, and finally uncertainty about the future. As we can see the spectrum of problems resulting from the pandemic is very wide and some of them have an impact on everyday functioning and lifestyle, some other influence psychological functioning and well-being. Moreover, different people deal with these problems differently and different changes in everyday life are challenging for them. The first challenge of the pandemic COVID-19 problem is the consequence of the limitation of direct contact with others. This regulation has very strong psychological consequences in the sense of loneliness and lack of closeness. Initially, people tried to deal with this limitation through the use of internet communicators. It turned out, however, that this form of contact for the majority of people was definitely insufficient and feelings of deprivation quickly increased. As much data from psychological literature shows, contact with others can have great psychological healing properties [e.g., 29 ]. The need for closeness is a natural need in times of crisis and catastrophes [ 30 ]. Unfortunately, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to meet this need was severely limited by regulations. This led to many people having serious problems with maintaining a good psychological condition.

Another troubling limitation found in our study were the restrictions on movement and travel, and the associated restrictions of most activities, which caused a huge change in lifestyle for many people. As shown in previous studies, travel and diverse leisure activities are important predictors of greater well-being [ 36 ]. Moreover, COVID-19 pandemic movement restrictions may be perceived by some people as a threat to human rights [ 37 ], which can contribute to people’s reluctance to accept lockdown rules.

The problem with accepting these restrictions was also related to the lack of understanding of the reasons behind them. Just as the limitation in contact with other people seemed understandable, the limitations related to physical activity and mobility were less so. Because of these limitations many people lost a sense of understanding of the rules and restrictions being imposed. Inconsistent communication in the media—called by some researchers the ‘infodemic’ [ 18 ], as well as discordant recommendations in different countries, causing an increasing sense of confusion in people.

Another huge challenge posed by the current pandemic is the feeling of uncertainty about the future. This feeling is caused by constant changes in the rules concerning daily functioning during the pandemic and what is prohibited and what is allowed. People lose their sense of being in control of the situation. From the psychological point of view, a long-lasting experience of lack of control can cause so-called learned helplessness, a permanent feeling of having no influence over the situation and no possibility of changing it [ 38 ], which can even result in depression and lower mental and physical wellbeing [ 39 ]. Control over live and the feeling that people have an influence on what happens in their lives is one of the basic rules of crisis situation resilience [ 30 ]. Unfortunately, also in this area, people have huge deficits caused by the pandemic. The obtained results are coherent with previous studies regarding the strategies harnessed to cope with the pandemic [e.g., 5 , 10 , 28 , 33 ]. For example, some studies showed that seeking social support is one of the most common strategies used to deal with the coronavirus pandemic [ 33 , 40 ]. Other ways to deal with this situation include distraction, active coping, and a positive appraisal of the situation [ 41 ]. Furthermore, research has shown that simple coping behaviors such as a healthy diet, not reading too much COVID-19 news, following a daily routine, and spending time outdoors may be protective factors against anxiety and depressive symptoms in times of the coronavirus pandemic [ 41 ].

This study showed that the acceptance of various limitations, and especially the feeling of discomfort associated with them, depended on the person’s earlier lifestyle. The more active and socializing a person was, the more restrictions were burdensome for him/her. The second factor, more of a psychological nature, was the fear of developing COVID-19. In this case, people who were more afraid of getting sick were more likely to submit to the imposed restrictions that, paradoxically, did not reduce their anxiety, and sometimes even heightened it.

Limitations of the study.

While the study shows interesting results, it also has some limitations. The purpose of the study was primarily to capture the first response to problems resulting from a pandemic, and as such its design is not ideal. First, the study participants are not diverse as much as would be desirable. They are mostly college-educated and relatively well off, which may influence how they perceive the pandemic situation. Furthermore, the recruitment was done by searching among the further acquaintances of the people involved in the study, so there is a risk that all the people interviewed come from a similar background. It would be necessary to conduct a study that also describes the reaction of people who are already in a more difficult life situation before the pandemic starts.

Moreover, it would also be worthwhile to pay attention to the interviewers themselves. All of the moderators were female, and although gender effects on the quality of the interviews and differences between the establishment of relationships between women and men were not observed during the debriefing process, the topic of gender effects on the results of qualitative research is frequently addressed in the literature [ 42 , 43 ]. Although the researchers approached the process with reflexivity and self-criticism at all stages, it would have seemed important to involve male moderators in the study to capture any differences in relationship dynamics.

Practical implications.

The study presented has many practical implications. Decision-makers in the state can analyze the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in a way that avoids a critical situation involving other infectious diseases in the future. The results of our study showing the most disruptive effects of the pandemic on people can serve as a basis for developing strategies to deal with the effects of the crisis so that it does not translate into a deterioration of the public’s mental health in the future.

The results of our study can also provide guidance on how to communicate information about restrictions in the future so that they are accepted and respected (for example by giving rational explanations of the reasons for introducing particular restrictions). In addition, the results of our study can also be a source of guidance on how to deal with the limitations that may arise in a recurrent COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other emergencies that could come.

The analysis of the results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially the lockdown periods, are a particular challenge for many people due to reduced social contact. On the other hand, it is social contacts that are at the same time a way of a smoother transition of crises. This knowledge should prompt decision-makers to devise ways to ensure pandemic safety without drastically limiting social contacts and to create solutions that give people a sense of control (instead of depriving it of). Providing such solutions can reduce the psychological problems associated with a pandemic and help people to cope better with it.

Conclusions

As more and more is said about the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic may not end soon and that we are likely to face more waves of this disease and related lockdowns, it is very important to understand how the different restrictions are perceived, what difficulties they cause and what are the biggest challenges resulting from them. For example, an important element of accepting the restrictions is understanding their sources, i.e., what they result from, what they are supposed to prevent, and what consequences they have for the fight against the pandemic. Moreover, we observed that the more incomprehensible the order was, the more it provoked to break it. This means that not only medical treatment is extremely important in an effective fight against a pandemic, but also appropriate communication.

The results of our study showed also that certain restrictions cause emotional deficits (e.g., loneliness, loss of sense of control) and, consequently, may cause serious problems with psychological functioning. From this perspective, it seems extremely important to understand which restrictions are causing emotional problems and how they can be dealt with in order to reduce the psychological discomfort associated with them.

Supporting information

S1 table. a full description of the changes occurring in poland at the time of the study..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133.s001

S2 Table. Characteristics of study participants.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133.s002

S1 Dataset. Transcriptions from the interviews.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258133.s003

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• Open access
• Published: 12 May 2020

Challenges and burden of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for child and adolescent mental health: a narrative review to highlight clinical and research needs in the acute phase and the long return to normality

• Jörg M. Fegert 1 ,
• Benedetto Vitiello 2 ,
• Paul L. Plener 1 , 3 &
• Vera Clemens 1  

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health volume  14 , Article number:  20 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is profoundly affecting life around the globe. Isolation, contact restrictions and economic shutdown impose a complete change to the psychosocial environment in affected countries. These measures have the potential to threaten the mental health of children and adolescents significantly. Even though the current crisis can bring with it opportunities for personal growth and family cohesion, disadvantages may outweigh these benefits. Anxiety, lack of peer contact and reduced opportunities for stress regulation are main concerns. Another main threat is an increased risk for parental mental illness, domestic violence and child maltreatment. Especially for children and adolescents with special needs or disadvantages, such as disabilities, trauma experiences, already existing mental health problems, migrant background and low socioeconomic status, this may be a particularly challenging time. To maintain regular and emergency child and adolescent psychiatric treatment during the pandemic is a major challenge but is necessary for limiting long-term consequences for the mental health of children and adolescents. Urgent research questions comprise understanding the mental health effects of social distancing and economic pressure, identifying risk and resilience factors, and preventing long-term consequences, including—but not restricted to—child maltreatment. The efficacy of telepsychiatry is another highly relevant issue is to evaluate the efficacy of telehealth and perfect its applications to child and adolescent psychiatry.

There are numerous mental health threats associated with the current pandemic and subsequent restrictions. Child and adolescent psychiatrists must ensure continuity of care during all phases of the pandemic. COVID-19-associated mental health risks will disproportionately hit children and adolescents who are already disadvantaged and marginalized. Research is needed to assess the implications of policies enacted to contain the pandemic on mental health of children and adolescents, and to estimate the risk/benefit ratio of measures such as home schooling, in order to be better prepared for future developments.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is profoundly affecting lives around the globe. Isolation, contact restrictions and economic shutdown impose a complete change to the psychosocial environment of affected countries. The current situation affects children, adolescents and their families in an exceptional way. Kindergartens and schools have been closed, social contacts strongly limited and out-of-home leisure time activities canceled. Parents are asked to support their children with home schooling, while at the same time working from home. External support by other family members and social support systems have fallen away. Beside worries and anxieties related to COVID-19, the economic situation has worsened with high and rising levels of unemployment in all affected countries. This has put a lot of pressure on children, adolescents and their families which could result in distress, mental health problems and violence.

As the pandemic is evolving through phases, this paper evaluates the impact these phases might have on mental health of children and adolescents and the provision of psychiatric services. This paper highlights some key challenges and concerns for treatment and research on child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) across Europe during the different pandemic phases and offers some recommendations that can be adopted immediately.

Due to the complexity of the issues and research questions and the aim to provide timely support for CAP professional, as method, a narrative review was chosen. A selective scientific literature review was conducted based on knowledge about the course of epidemics, current experiences in CAP treatment and personal communication with CAP professionals all over Europe [ 1 ].

Epidemiological phases of pandemic

Knowledge of epidemic infections allows us to divide the pandemic into three phases, and to identify, within each phase, different psychological reactions (see Fig.  1 ).

Three phases of the pandemic. Pandemic infections can be divided into three phases: preparation phase, punctum maximum phase and return to normality phase. Within each phase, different psychological reactions exist: Epidemiological measures lead to a flattening and prolongation of the curve

Phase one or the preparation phase: Governments enforce social distancing, shutdown and general measures of hygiene in order to contain and mitigate the spreading of the infection and latten the curve of new cases over time.

Phase two or the punctum maximum phase: The curve reaches the highest incidence of new cases, and mortality rate peaks, including a plateau phase. In the current pandemic, a predictions of when this occurs have been made, and some countries seem to have passed this point while many others have not yet reach it.

Phase three or the return to normality phase: recovering from the pandemic, which requires re-organizing and re-establishing services and practices.

Measures of containment and mitigation, such as social distancing and hygiene, can succeed in flattening the curve and in this way reducing the height of the punctum maximum (number of infected subjects), but with a more prolonged time course for returning to normality.

Pandemic-related mental health risks of children and adolescents

During the pandemic (phase one and two).

During the recent Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China, 54% of the participants of a large online study rated the impact of the outbreak on their mental health as moderate to severe, with depressive symptoms and anxiety being the conditions most often stated [ 2 ]. The current crises imposes multifaceted burdens on children. They include the socio-ecological impact of the pandemic, which is understood to be enormous. The environment of children is affected at different levels– including community and family - as well as the individual child itself [ 3 ].

Community-related risks for mental health

Since the pandemic was announced, at the community level, there has been disruption of, or more limited access to basic services, such as kindergarten, schools, and routine medical care [ 4 ]. Several countries have seen a re-organization of hospital services, with provisional care (including re-assigning doctors and nurses not usually involved in critical care). There have been closures, partial closures or reduced services of inpatient and day-care facilities, with outpatient contacts reduced in some places to emergency cases only. Some hospitals have been unable to accept new inpatients due to the risk of infection [ 1 ]. Questions have arisen on how to deal with the risk of infected patients in closed units infecting staff and other patients. There have been concerns for the possible future lack of adequate resources for mental health services as most resources are directed towards ICU and somatic care [ 1 ]. Importantly, even the activity of child protection services and currently existing programs of support or supervision by youth welfare agencies have been disrupted or interrupted [ 5 ]. The lack of access to these basic services can be particularly harmful for vulnerable children and/or families.

Moreover, leisure time activities have been limited. In most countries, children have not been allowed to use regular playgrounds, social group activities are prohibited and sports clubs are closed [ 4 ]. Social relations have been strongly limited to closest family members. In several countries, contact to peers has been prohibited or severely limited [ 6 ]. This can have a negative impact on children and adolescents given the importance of peer contact for well-being [ 7 , 8 ]. Many countries have experienced a lock-down of schools [ 9 ]. As pointed out by a recent review, school closures may not have a major impact on reducing infections and preventing deaths [ 10 ]. Hence, possible negative consequences such as loss of education time, restricted access to peers and loss of daily structure need to be taken into account when estimating the advantages and disadvantages of this particular measure. Moreover, in some communities, stigmatization of infected children and families may occur.

Challenges within the families

At the family level, the pandemic has led to a re-organization of everyday life. All family members have to cope with the stress of quarantine and social distancing. School shutdowns have led to home-schooling and potential postponement of exams. Parents have experienced increased pressure to work from home, to keep jobs and businesses running as well as to take care of schooling children at home at the same time, while caregiver resources including grandparents and the wider family have been restricted. Family connections and support may be disrupted. Fear of losing family members who belong to a risk group can increase. In case of death, the pandemic disrupts the normal bereavement processes of families. Grief and mourning of lost family members, especially in cases where contact with the infected member is restricted or refused, could lead to adjustment problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and even suicide of both, adults and young people [ 11 ].

It also has fallen on the parents’ shoulders to inform and explain to children about the COVID-19 pandemic, and to handle fear and anxiety accompanying these uncertain times. All family members may have own fears related to COVID-19. Taken together, this can result in enormous stress and psychological distress for all family members.

The pandemic has major economic implications and puts financial pressure on many families. It has been shown in previous economic recessions that economic pressure, even if not accompanied by social distancing, can pose a severe threat to mental health. Firstly, economic recessions and connected factors such as unemployment, income decline, and unmanageable debts are significantly associated with a decrease of mental well-being, increased rates of several mental disorders, substance-related disorders, and suicidal behaviors [ 12 , 13 ]—risks that of course also concern parents [ 14 ]. The recent recession therefore has added to the fact that low socioeconomic status is a well-known risk factor for poor mental health in children [ 15 ]. Mental illness and substance abuse of parents significantly influence parent–child relations [ 16 , 17 , 18 ] and increase the risk for mental health problems in children [ 19 ].

Domestic violence and child maltreatment

Additionally, in economic recessions a significant increase in domestic violence can be seen [ 20 ]. Income loss and economic hardship can lead to feelings of economic stress and consequent marital conflict [ 21 , 22 ]. Quarantine can lead to decreased freedom and privacy, and consequently higher stress. It may also increase existing controlling behaviors by perpetrators as they struggle to regain a sense of control. Exposure to perpetrators is increased, and the possibilities of victims to temporarily escape abusive partners are reduced [ 23 ]. In the current COVID-19 crisis, there have been reports from all over the world about a significant increase in domestic violence [ 24 ]. UN secretary general António Guterres pointed out a “horrifying global surge in domestic violence” [ 25 ]. Exposure to domestic violence again significantly affects mental health of children [ 26 , 27 ] and has the potential to create long-term consequences [ 28 ].

Moreover, a notable increase in physical, emotional and sexualized violence against children during recession has been reported. For example, Huang and colleagues were able to prove a doubling of the incidence of abusive head trauma, a particularly severe form of child abuse associated with a high mortality rate, during the “Great Recession” 2007–2010 [ 29 ]. In the literature, an increase of all forms of child maltreatment has been proven during a recession in a wide variety of cultures [ 30 ]. Based on these data, for the COVID-19 pandemic, a worldwide increase in the risks for children and adolescents is a plausible assumption. The current reduced societal supervision and lack of access to child protection services is an additional burden.

Taken together, despite a lack of literature specifically addressing the impact of recession on children, existing data point towards threats to mental health of children and adolescents. This is confirmed by one study that directly assessed adolescent mental health during the financial crisis in Greece. The researchers found an increase in mental health problems during the recession [ 31 ]. Notably, this study also demonstrates that mental health was impaired disproportionately in the most vulnerable socio-economic groups—adolescents whose families faced more severe economic pressure.

Quarantine-associated risks

Besides economic pressure, COVID-19 pandemic-related quarantine in several countries could significantly affect mental health. In a recent review on the psychological impact of quarantine, Samantha Brooks and colleagues pointed out that post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) occur in 28 to 34% and fear in 20% of subjects in quarantine [ 32 ]. Additional quarantine-related mental health problems include depression, low mood, irritability, insomnia, anger and emotional exhaustion [ 32 ]. Horesh et al. argue that the COVID-19 crisis involves numerous characteristics seen in mass traumatic events so an increase in PTSS during and after the pandemic can be expected [ 33 ].

The scarcely available data point towards a detrimental effect of disease-containment measures such as quarantine and isolation on the mental health of children. In a study conducted after the H1N1 and SARS epidemics in Central and North America, criteria for PTSD based on parental reporting were met by 30% of the children who had been isolated or quarantined [ 34 ].

Another quarantine-associated threat is an increased risk of online sexual exploitation. Since the beginning of the pandemic, children and adolescents have spent more time online, which may increase the risk of contact with online predators. Due to limited social encounter, children’s outreach to new contacts and groups online has increased. As more adults have been isolated at home, there may also be an extended demand for pornography [ 35 ]. Europol has already reported an increase in child pornography since the beginning of the pandemic [ 36 ].

The question remains, whether infection with COVID-19 can directly lead to onset or aggravation of mental disorders. Seropositivity to influenza A, B and Coronaviruses has been associated with a history of mood disorders [ 37 ]. In addition, onset of psychotic disorders has been reported to be associated with different Coronavirus strains [ 38 ].

In summary, phases one and two of the current COVID-19 pandemic represent a dangerous accumulation of risk factors for mental health problems in children and adolescents of enormous proportions: re-organization of family life, massive stress, fear of death of relatives, especially with relation to grandparents and great-grandparents, economic crisis with simultaneous loss of almost all support systems and opportunities for evasion in everyday life, limited access to health services as well as a lack of social stabilization and control from peer groups, teachers at school, and sport activities.

Can there be beneficial consequences for mental health from the current crisis?

Together with multiple threats to mental health, the current pandemic could also provide opportunities. When families successfully complete the initial transition phase, the absence of private and business appointments, guests and business trips can bring rest and relaxation into family life. Several external stressors disappear. Mastering the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis together may strengthen the sense of community and cohesion among family members. More time with caregivers can go along with increased social support, which strengthens resilience [ 39 ]. In addition, children troubled by school due to bullying or other stressors, can experience the situation of home-schooling as relieving, as a main stressor in their everyday life ceases to exist.

Moreover, mastering current challenges could contribute to personal growth and development. Personal growth is an experience of psychological development as compared with a previous level of functioning or previous attitudes towards life. Thus, successful management of stress and trauma can lead to personal growth, which in turn reinforces the sense of competence and becomes a protective factor for coping with future stressors [ 40 ].

However, environmental factors such as socio-demographics, individual social networks and social support affect the outcome of a crisis [ 41 , 42 ]. Therefore, the opportunity for personal growth may be unequal (see also “Focus on high risk children”). Nevertheless, personal characteristics determine stress-related growth as well. These factors include intrinsic religiousness and positive affectivity. Intrinsic religiousness is suggested to help to find meaning in crisis, the relevance of positive affectivity shows the importance of positive mood and attitude for stress-related growth [ 42 ].

The long way back to normality after the pandemic (phase three)

One major challenge after the pandemic will be to deal with its sequelae. One main consequence will be the economic recession and its implications for mental health of children and their families, as discussed above. During the acute phase of the pandemic, stressors such as social distancing, re-organization of family life, school and businesses, fear of COVID-19 infections, and possibly loss of family members/friends are initially in the forefront. Economic problems may be recognized mainly after the acute phase of the pandemic, although their starting point was in an earlier phase. Some parents might have lost their jobs or businesses, while others might have to deal with an accumulated workload or face major re-organization at work. For children and adolescents, the pressure from school to catch-up for time lost during the acute phase of the pandemic may increase. However, there is evidence that rate and direction of change in macroeconomic conditions rather than actual conditions affect harsh parenting [ 43 ]. This suggests that the expectation of a negative economic development is a stronger determinant of negative parental behavior than actual recession, which could point towards the conclusion that harsh parenting and violence will have its climax during the acute phase of the pandemic.

Due to interruption of regular medical services, resources in the health care system may not be enough to overcome previous lack of treatment and supervision. Moreover, not only the accumulation of inadequately treated cases, but furthermore the enhanced need for mental health services might be a problem. The increase of mental health problems in children and their families due to recession and quarantine is discussed above and can be expected to further increase in phase three due to emerging recession. Literature suggests that mental health symptoms will outlast the acute phase of the pandemic. In health-care workers, the risk for alcohol abuse or dependency symptoms was still increased 3 years after quarantine [ 44 ]. A quarter of quarantined subjects avoided crowded enclosed places and one-fifth avoided public spaces [ 45 ].

Additionally, the increased risk of child maltreatment and household dysfunction may not diminish immediately after the pandemic as several triggers such as economic pressure and mental health problems of parents will last for some time. Moreover, sequelae of pandemic-associated increase of maltreatment of children and adolescents may last for a lifetime. Adverse childhood experiences are known to affect the life of survivors across their life span. Long-term effects include increased risk for numerous mental and physical disorders [ 46 ], reduced life quality [ 47 ], developmental and cognitive impairments [ 48 , 49 ], social problems [ 50 ] and a reduction of up to 20 years in life expectancy [ 51 ].

Focus on high risk children

The consequences of the pandemic can hit every child. However, there are several indicators that children who are already disadvantaged are at highest risk. First, financial losses will cause increased economic pressure to low-income families due to lack of savings. Second, there may be increased disparities between families with high and low socio-economic status, for example due to differences in parental support for home schooling and leisure activities during the pandemic. Specific modalities such as telemedicine and telepsychiatry may be less accessible for children of low-income families who may not have the resources to use telepsychiatry or to use it in a safe and confidential environment.

Another highly vulnerable group is that of children and adolescents with chronic disorders, for whom important support and therapies may have been reduced or cancelled. For children with intellectual disability, it can be hard to understand the situation and the necessity for the restrictions, with consequent increase in anxiety and agitation. Besides, children with disabilities are at higher risk for child maltreatment [ 52 ]. During the pandemic, due to lack of social control and impaired ability to communicate, this risk can increase.

Children and adolescents having experienced adverse events before the pandemic occurred are especially vulnerable for consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The experience of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is associated with higher risk for mental health problems. Maltreatment has been found to be associated with consequent heightened neural response to signals of threat [ 53 ]. Moreover, while emotional reactivity is increased, emotion regulation is decreased [ 54 ]. This suggests that children and adolescents who have experienced adversity before the pandemic are at higher risk to develop anxiety and adopt dysfunctional strategies to manage the COVID-19-associated challenges.

Another important high-risk group is that of children and adolescents with already existing mental health problems. Most mental disorders require regular psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment. Therefore, lack of access to health services can be particularly detrimental. Severity and outcome of mental disorders could worsen because of delay in prompt diagnosis and treatment. This would be especially problematic for conditions such as early onset schizophrenia, in which early treatment is an important prognostic factor. However, there are more pandemic-associated risks for this group. Taking care of children with mental health problems, in particular externalizing disorders, can be challenging [ 55 ]—thus adding to the already increased distress of parents during the pandemic.

With increasing levels of psychopathology, capacity for emotion regulation and adaptive coping is reduced, while maladaptive coping increases [ 56 ], a pattern also observed in children and adolescents with a history of child maltreatment [ 57 ]. Likewise, children with previously existing psychopathology are at greater risk to show severe worry about political news [ 58 ]. Together, this suggests that current COVID-19 crisis-associated stress is particularly harmful for children and adolescents with mental disorders or a history of child maltreatment. On the other hand, stress exposure can enhance already existing psychopathology [ 59 ], which can lead to more severe courses of mental disorders—meeting reduced treatment resources. An impact of recession on self-harm has been shown in different studies, especially after the world economic crisis 2008 [ 60 ]. As self-harm is predominantly found among adolescents [ 61 ], an upsurge of self-injurious and suicidal behavior in youth can be hypothesized as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue should receive urgent attention. Thus, it is likely that the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to an exacerbation of existing mental health disorders as well as contribute to the onset of new stress-related disorders in many, especially children and adolescents with pre-existing vulnerabilities—aggravating pre-existing disadvantages.

Unaccompanied and accompanied refugee minors are a high-risk group for all the aforementioned vulnerabilities—low socioeconomic status, experience of ACEs and mental health problems [ 62 ]. Additionally, as some early cases of COVID-19 have been reported in refugee institutions, shelters and camps, the consequent panic and fear of infection can increase the risk of stigmatization of refugees. As many countries are hosting a large number of refugees, and there is a lack of medical and psychiatric specialist care for them, COVID-19-associated mental health risk may disproportionately hit these children and adolescents already disadvantaged and marginalized [ 63 , 64 ].

Practical challenges and research questions in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of associated with the COVID-19 pandemic

Preparation phase (phase one).

During preparation phase, it is necessary to provide clear and correct information to parents and patients. A good understanding of COVID-19 is important to prevent panic and help comply with the measures for containment and mitigation mandated by the government. Information can include tips for parents on how to talk to children and adolescents about COVID-19, the associated risks and the changes in daily life. Moreover, information on how to manage daily life at home during quarantine and social distancing as well as home schooling can be helpful. Support regarding how to address anxiety and stress in children is important (For information on these issues (see e.g. recommendations of ESCAP [ 65 ] and AACAP [ 66 ]). Information should be made available to parents regarding how to ensure regular psychotherapeutic and psychiatric treatment and crisis intervention during social distancing and other restrictions of phase one and two.

Parents and patients in need of ongoing medication should be advised by their doctor to stock a certain amount in case of a rupture in stock. This is not regarded as hoarding but taking adequate measures to treat chronically ill patients. Furthermore, doctors could issue extra prescriptions in order to ensure that patients have sufficient medication during phase two of the pandemic.

A good option to maintain treatment during the pandemic is telepsychiatry. During the preparation phase, technical prerequisites should be met and already existing tools can be adapted. Concerns about data protection and high technical protection standards should be addressed and user-friendly systems that can be used by all age groups regardless of abilities shall be established. It has been shown in several studies, reviews and meta-analyses, that online-delivered psychotherapeutic care for children and adolescents is feasible and effective [ 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ], so that it can be understood as primary source of standard care in times of restricted physical contact. However, not all children and adolescents may have the technical equipment for telepsychiatry. More importantly, not all may have the opportunity for a safe, confidential space at home.

In most countries, national societies of CAP have taken an active role to face the pandemic. They have been putting forward initiatives to support the continuity of care, to guide parents, teachers, children and health professionals on how to handle the mental issues and to advocate national authorities on the bio-psycho-social impact of the crisis on the life of children and adolescents.

Punctum maximum phase (phase two)

First, CAP needs to provide services for children and adolescents with mental health disorders. A proportion of children with acute and life-threatening psychiatric disorders require CAP inpatient treatments throughout all phases of the pandemic. Children with pre-existing mental needs, e.g. severe forms of autism, have been deprived of professional support systems meaning families and parents have been left to cope on their own. Due to closure of specialized and complex educational settings for children with developmental problems and multiple handicaps in many countries, problems will exacerbate. CAP institutions should keep contact with patients of special need by using online interventions or phone contact, to avoid disrupting current treatment programs and offer support to caregivers.

Severity and outcome of mental disorders could worsen because of delay in prompt diagnosis and treatment. This would be especially problematic for conditions such as early onset schizophrenia, for which the duration of untreated psychosis has been linked with future level of functioning.

Crisis interventions must be accessible all the time. This support will not only be needed by patients with existing mental health disorders, but also those developing anxiety, depression or adjustment problems and post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of losing near relatives during the pandemic. Moreover, there are several additional pandemic-related risks for traumatization. As discussed earlier, domestic violence and child abuse might increase due to extended periods of isolation within an abusive or unsafe home, and less intense supervision from child protection services and lacking support from peers or schools. Although words like “anxiety,” “fear,” and “stress” are constantly mentioned in media, specific peri- and posttraumatic implications of this crisis are not acknowledged [ 33 ]. To offer specific help is a central task of CAP. Therefore, several appointments should be arranged for patients with new onset of child psychiatric disorders and adequate care provided. Since there is a shortage of CAP professionals throughout Europe, protection of this scare resource is crucial. Therefore, screening of patients via helplines could be useful as a triage measure to identify the most severe cases. Patients who need to be seen in person due to an acute and severe mental health problem should pass a COVID-19 screening before getting into contact with CAP professionals to assure appropriate safety measures including protective gear. The latter also needs to be existent in handling severely agitated or aggressive patients in emergency psychiatric care. As COVID-19 can spread via saliva, protective measures (in addition to masks, gloves and protective clothing) need to include face shields.

Another important issue regarding CAP treatment during the acute phase of the pandemic are restrictions on parental visits for inpatients and their increased isolation from families and social contacts that can lead to an increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior. If inpatients have reduced access to family members due to hygiene restrictions, units should maintain contact with the patient’s family as much as possible in order to adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, digital communication with the patient’s family should be encouraged.

CAP is an understaffed medical discipline, with a shortage of specialists vis-à-vis mental health needs. Some young child psychiatry trainees have been re-assigned to assist in other medical departments for urgent care during the pandemic [ 1 ]. This could leave them at risk of delaying or disrupting their training and qualifications. Alternatively, innovative didactic modalities such as online training and supervision, video presentations, web-based programs and courses can provide trainees in child psychiatry with formative activities. Allowing time spent in providing critical care (if re-assigned) to count towards their overall clinical requirements would be an important step to ensure timely completion of training.

Long return to normality (phase three)

In the third phase of the pandemic (return to normality), it will be important to quickly re-organize and re-establish lost treatment with patients and develop strategies for CAP to deal with the burden and strain of new patients not seen and not referred during the pandemic. During the acute phase of the pandemic, in several countries only emergencies have been addressed. This has not only been restricted to regular mental health services but has also included child protection services and support for children and families. Offering adequate services to families for dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic is central for reducing long-term consequences for mental health.

The economic crisis brought by the pandemic could have long-term negative consequences leading to increased family conflict, abuse, suicidality and substance abuse. Access to mental health services is needed to cope with the increased demand in times of economic recession [ 13 ].

Reports are indicating a decline of people using medical services (e.g. emergency services, general practitioners, calls or demands for psychiatric assessment) for fear of being infected by COVID-19. Consequently, after the crisis there might be a sudden surge of activity to a magnitude possibly overwhelming the capacity of CAP services.

During the acute phase of the pandemic victims of domestic violence and child maltreatment may not be noticed due to lack of social control by peers and staff in school, sport clubs etc. and reduced accessibility of support services. In phase three, due to less parental control and more contact to others, some children and adolescents may confide incidents during the pandemic to others. CAP must be prepared to offer specific treatment for these children and adolescents. CAP professionals must be aware of this increased risk and consequently be sensitive for signs of maltreatment. In case of suspicion, specific anamnesis should be taken, and diagnostic clarification made.

Further research

The current COVID-19 crisis has imposed numerous restrictions on research. Laboratories have been closed, scientific staff has been working from home, recruitment in studies has been paused. However, this time has brought up numerous interesting research questions that should be addressed within the next months. One major question has been the effect of social distancing on children, adolescents and their families. As stated above, isolation and home schooling can affect mental health in multiple ways. However, this has been the first time in history these measures have been implemented widely and comprehensively. Prevalence of psychiatric disorders including anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, suicide attempts and NSSI in minors and parents should be monitored. In longitudinal studies, the effect of different political measures on mental health and well-being should be assessed. Risk and resilience factors for children, adolescents and families could be identified with mixed-method approaches. The role of previous traumatization and other environmental and individual factors on stress regulation and coping can give meaningful insights on stress resilience research. During the current pandemic, risk factors accumulate like under a burning glass. For example, disentangling the real-time impact of parental unemployment or family financial hardship and the effect of social distancing and isolation could give important information in order to estimate the costs of current measures. This would also provide information about the risk–benefit ratio of certain measures to inform decision-makers and better prepare for future scenarios. The effects of the current situation on adverse childhood experiences should be assessed. This includes both household dysfunctions such as mental health or substance abuse of parents, and domestic violence and child maltreatment.

Another issue to be addressed is the means in which children and adolescents to stay in touch with peers during the crisis. The last decade has been characterized by an increasing use of online services to get in touch with peers as well as mating. The pandemic may catalyze this transition for good or for bad. It might ease social encounters but might result in unrealistic high demands on partners, tension between the virtual and the real self and increased distance from “real” life. The current crisis has hit several young people at a pivotal moment of their social development. To assess the effect of this virtualization of social relations on further development of children and adolescents is of great interest.

Furthermore, gender issues and the role of fathers and mothers is an interesting subject. The current Corona crisis has shown that “essential employees” are mostly female [ 71 ].

With a lot of creativity and motivation to reorganize mental health care, the pandemic has seen a massive increase in the use of telepsychiatry. It is useful to analyze the interventions used during the pandemic such as telepsychiatry and to determine measures of quality control. Patients, CAP professionals and parents should be surveyed on their experiences of online therapy. Outcomes of telepsychiatry in a real-life clinical outpatient setting should be evaluated and compared to regular face-to-face therapy as current knowledge on the efficacy of online interventions is restricted to controlled intervention studies so far.

Conclusions

There are numerous pandemic-related mental health risks for children and adolescents. During the acute phase, the main burden has been associated with social distancing, increased pressure on families and reduced access to support services. After the pandemic, economic recession and consequences of anxiety, stress and violence exposure may be predominant issues to meet in CAP care.

Despite the difficult circumstances, CAP professionals shall maintain regular and emergency treatment as far as possible in order to reduce negative consequences for children and adolescents. Flexibility and creativity have been needed to ensure treatment during the different phases of the pandemic. All CAP professionals should be aware of the numerous mental health threats associated with the pandemic.

COVID-19-associated mental health risk has disproportionately hit disadvantaged and marginalized children and adolescents. A special focus should be set on these children in order to prevent aggravating pre-existing disadvantages.

The current pandemic accumulates several risk factors for mental health of children and adolescents. Longitudinal real-time studies can help to disentangle these factors and their relevance for stress-regulating coping processes and mental health. Finally, the current pandemic, stressful and disruptive as it is, could provide the opportunity to introduce innovative approaches to delivering mental health services through telepsychiatry thus possibly fostering a more efficient use of available resources. It will remain to be determined through appropriate research which modalities prove indeed effective and safe.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Fegert, J.M., Vitiello, B., Plener, P.L. et al. Challenges and burden of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for child and adolescent mental health: a narrative review to highlight clinical and research needs in the acute phase and the long return to normality. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health 14 , 20 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-020-00329-3

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Recovering from the Emotional Challenges of the Pandemic

By Isaac Chotiner

With Americans being vaccinated at a rate of more than two million shots per day, attention has begun to turn to life after the pandemic . But public-health officials are increasingly concerned that more than half a million deaths in this country alone and a year of isolation, closed schools, and lost jobs have had traumatic effects on many Americans, especially children. To talk about what those effects might be, and how to insure that people get the care and support they need, I recently spoke by phone with Dr. Archana Basu, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a research scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how children and adults deal with trauma, the distinct challenges facing young adults, and how lessons from the pandemic can be used to improve mental-health care going forward.

When it became clear that a pandemic was going to change our lives, what were you most concerned about, in terms of mental health?

As was the case for a majority of Americans, I don’t think I expected what the horizon for the pandemic would be. I doubt that most of my colleagues really anticipated it would last as long as it has. We absolutely expected that there would be an increase in mental-health concerns and some level of distress, because that would be a very typical reaction to an extreme pervasive stressor or trauma, like a pandemic. And we’ve seen this in the past with other mass disasters. There is an increase in mental-health concerns and distress, and then once safety is reëstablished and a sense of routine is reëstablished, we see a decline and a return to baseline for the overwhelming majority of people, including children. What that’s really saying is we are very adaptable, certainly as humans, and as kids. It is with the prolonged period, such as the one we are experiencing now, that we start to worry about more long-term and more pervasive effects.

What effects, specifically?

We are hearing about an increase in rates of severe anxiety and depression-related concerns. We also know that this may have been even more challenging for people who were already struggling with mental-health concerns. There is emerging data to show that rates of self-injuring behaviors have increased as well. The fact is that is what we would expect, and we are seeing a really broad spectrum of mental-health and behavioral concerns. However, I do want to point out that I don’t think this is going to be limited to mental-health concerns. I think there are other parts of our children’s lives where we’re going to see those effects. Some of that might be physical health. Pediatricians have been very concerned about the amount of exercise that children are getting. And there is emerging data to show that sleep- and weight-related issues might be other examples of physical-health concerns.

You focus especially on kids. How might the mental-health challenges facing kids after something like this be different or similar for adults, broadly speaking?

Fundamentally, I think children of all ages—and this is certainly truer for younger children, but really even teens—need a supportive, responsive adult, at least one responsive caregiver, to really help them understand what’s happening, to cope with it in terms of thinking about what they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing. An adult’s capacity to cope with the level of unpredictability and isolation is just more varied relative to a child’s. One of the biggest things that is different for children is that they are not going to get as much out of digital tools, because they’re just much more likely to need the in-person interaction. This is especially true for younger kids. And we know from decades of research that a supportive caregiving environment is one of the strongest buffers for children. And I think that is different for kids than it is for adults. Adults need social support and social connections, but I think their capacity in terms of figuring out a way to access it and to perhaps go longer periods without it is greater than it is for children.

The second thing is the idea of stability. We all benefit from routines and structure, but children are developing their sense of routine and structure, and when there is a stressor or trauma like a pandemic, all elements of their lives are affected. They need an adult to help them develop those routines and structures in this adapted format. And having that sense of stability and predictability—it’s true for all ages, but kids really benefit from that.

If children do not get these things that you’re saying they need, what are the long-term effects of that?

So, for younger kids, that might look like what we think about as difficulty in regulating themselves, whether it’s sleep, whether it’s a bigger emotional response to even the smallest kind of challenge that they might otherwise be able to cope with. It may be more irritability or anger, but also somatic symptoms around eating and sleeping. It’s a range of symptoms, but broadly in more extreme versions what we think about as anxiety, depression, lack of motivation for school, or lack of desire to connect with other people. In younger kids that might be less willingness to play, or their emotional regulation is going to look different, so more crying, more irritability.

What should the government have done at the state and local and federal level to prepare for this, starting a year ago? And what did they do?

A couple of things have come out of this pandemic period that have been very valuable and that I hope will define future policy. There’s always been a shortage of mental-health-care resources, even pre-pandemic, and certainly if you move out of major cities and metropolitan areas, that was definitely true, even more so for children. We were already looking at a system that was really close to capacity or at capacity when the pandemic came along.

And so at this stage, the emerging mental-health landscape really speaks to the need for not only increasing our capacity but fundamentally rethinking the ways in which we are delivering mental-health care. An example of that would be that pre-pandemic, in the state of Massachusetts, where I practice, some insurance companies would reimburse remote tele-mental-health care, and other insurances did not. One of the things that happened in the pandemic across the United States really was that there were emergency orders issued to make this remote tele-mental health reimbursable by insurance companies, and in the state of Massachusetts that includes both video and phone sessions. Recently, in the state of Massachusetts, this has now been made permanent. And this is actually important because, while it makes mental-health care hopefully more accessible to a broader group of people, it also just reduces the burden in terms of commute. But we also know that a video visit requires a stable Internet connection, which is not always possible and not available to every family, and so I think the fact that it also includes phone sessions is important. To me, that is one very concrete example of how policy related to mental-health care can be a game changer.

That being said, I think there are at least a couple of other areas for us to consider. Fundamentally, our health-care system, including our mental-health-care system, is a tertiary health-care system. By the time we see children in an outpatient clinic, they have a diagnosable mental-health condition that they have really been struggling with for a while. In fact, the criteria to diagnose someone and bill their insurance requires that the mental-health condition be actively impairing their lives, whether it’s in terms of their school or their relationships. So, fundamentally, we are working in a system that prioritizes tertiary care. And this is a big problem, because we really know that we can work with people, and children in particular, in a preventive manner. There are emerging models of care that have actually been used across the country—I won’t say uniformly certainly—but there’s been successful implementation of this in different health-care settings across the country, and I think they are becoming more common, which I think is important and promising. Basically, these are integrated models of care where mental-health assessments and interventions are integrated as part of routine care visits, whether it is pediatrics or internal medicine.

The other thing that is emerging is the use of digital tools. There is emerging data to show that, for certain types of mental-health concerns, at low to moderate severity, certain types of digital tools, like those the V.A. uses, are a very effective adjunct to working with a therapist. So that traditional model of weekly hour-long sessions or fifty-minute sessions—we can build on that, and digital tools can really help with that process. There are very effective interventions for anxiety or sleep aid.

What do you compare the pandemic to, or what events do you look to, when trying to make sense of it?

Prior mass disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are one example that we might extrapolate from and learn from. But we know that it’s a best-case estimate, because the pandemic has upended every element of our lives, and it has really fundamentally changed how we live, how we work, how we attend school. It’s not geographically circumscribed, and it’s been prolonged. And it seems like perhaps there’s a horizon now, but, as you said, there’s still a ways to go. So I think there are ways in which we can learn from prior mass disasters, but also recognize that this is a pretty unique stressor that we haven’t experienced before.

Obviously, different kids are going to deal with this in different ways, and, of course, different groups have been hit harder and less hard by the pandemic. So I don’t want to make it seem like everyone’s had the same experience, but, broadly speaking, does the universality change how to treat it, how to talk about it, how to think about it, how people respond to it? At the very least, people are looking around and seeing other people with similar challenges.

I think actually that’s a really good question and for at least two reasons. One of them is that it poses a unique challenge for health-care workers, right? We are also experiencing exactly what the folks we work with are experiencing. We are not unaffected by it. And so there’s so much data already out there in terms of the impact of this on physicians and mental-health-care professionals and health-care workers in general. And there is a whole other literature talking about trauma-informed care, which is fundamentally the idea that the trauma is actually pervasive and there isn’t an us-versus-them.

This is not to say that we are all experiencing exactly the same thing. I read a quote somewhere that we are all in the same storm, but in different boats. And I think it poses a unique challenge or certainly a need to support health-care workers. But, frankly, also, when I think about children, supporting children really means supporting the systems or the caregivers that support kids, right? And that’s most commonly parents and school systems, and there is no one whose life is untouched.

And so in some ways the conversation about emotional health is relevant for everyone. And that is actually perhaps one of the silver linings, or a positive outgrowth, of this otherwise terrible experience: the idea that emotional health is important and central to health is now more common than ever, and it reduces the stigma around it. But it also poses challenges in terms of supporting parents and health-care workers and school systems more.

The second thing I will say is that, even as this trauma has shaken our sense of trust and well-being and predictability and safety, we do see and hear about an extraordinary outpouring of support for one another. And one possible outgrowth of this experience may be that not just our hopes but our efforts toward a more equitable and compassionate society might actually increase. It’s not just one section or one subgroup of people for this cause.

This is also a situation where parents and children might be going through something similar.

You’re absolutely right, and I think one of the things that we talk about when I work with families is that, for me, working with children is really about working with parents and collaborating with the family as a whole. Even in non-pandemic times, trauma affects the whole family, even if only one member of the family may actually have directly experienced it, it really does impact the whole family, right? And I think it’s an opportunity for parents to essentially model and for children to learn and see how parents and adults might cope with something like this, how they engage in self-care, how they prioritize their own health needs. This is also a situation where parents engaging in their own health care and their own self-care is probably one of the best things they can do for their own kids.

Are there any ways in which you would expect aspects of trauma or post-traumatic stress to hit adults more than kids?

The emerging data actually does show that young adults in particular are reporting much higher levels of mental-health concerns and distress over all. And one of the reasons, we suspect, is that young adulthood is really a period when people are figuring out their sense of self, figuring out their identity, moving from the family they were born into to developing their own relationships and maybe developing a family of choice, a professional identity. It’s a time for exploration. And I think part of what a communal trauma like this does is it certainly increases uncertainty. There was Pew Research data showing that, for young adults, the economic concerns were greater than the physical-health concerns.

Speaking of developing your family of choice, I know you, specifically, have thought about women and the effects of mental health on them.

Pregnancy is a really sensitive period in terms of brain development for babies, and all types of cognitive, motor, linguistics abilities, and emotion-regulation skills. There’s a tremendous amount of research to show that serious stressors during pregnancy can not only be detrimental for maternal mental health but also impact the fetus, impact maternal child bonding and then, ultimately, a child’s development.

Typically, pregnant women are often connecting with others in terms of the shared experience. And, in our own study, there were very significant concerns around isolation and loneliness. We know that prenatal and postpartum anxiety and depression are huge concerns. Typical rates range between ten and fifteen per cent, but the current rates are much higher. So I think that is real cause for concern. Some of the recent policies, like the Rescue Act, for example, do have some very specific items that I think are very family-friendly, including one year of postpartum care under Medicare for women and working parents. And I think those types of policies are going to be really critical to supporting moms and babies.

We don’t have time to get into school reopenings, which is extremely complex, but is there any aspect of children’s mental health that you think is really important for people to understand while this debate goes on? And, if so, what would it be?

This might be very obvious to some people, but I think fundamentally this debate has been framed in terms of choices between mental health and learning. And the reality is, the way we learn best is by feeling safe—we are really able to be more present, and our attentional and motivational systems are much more engaged in learning. Children learn best in safe, predictable environments, where they feel connected. This was true before the pandemic, and it’s true now more than ever. I think that emotional health and learning go hand in hand; that’s fundamentally how the brain functions. It’s not an either/or situation, and so whether schools are reopening or not, I think attending to the social and emotional health of students and teachers has to be part of rethinking this opening process. The mental-health piece is often thought about as an afterthought or something that will inevitably follow. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.

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By Atul Gawande

By Adam Gopnik

By Robin Wright

The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea @megankuhfeld jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea @jsoland karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea @karynlew emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea @emily_r_morton.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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MY COVID-19 Story: how young people overcome the covid-19 crisis

As part of UNESCO’s initiative “MY COVID-19 Story”,  young people have been invited to tell their stories and experiences: how they feel, how they act, what makes them feel worried and what future they envision, how the crisis has affected their lives, the challenges they face, new opportunities being explored, and their hopes for the future. This campaign was launched in April as part of UNESCO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to give the floor to young people worldwide, share their views and amplify their voices. While the world grapples with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, many young people are taking on new roles, demonstrating leadership in their countries and communities, and sharing creative ideas and solutions. To this day, UNESCO has already received more than 150 written testimonials.

Self-isolation can be a difficult time… However, many young people worldwide decided to tackle this with productivity and positivity. Monty (17), a secondary school student from the United Kingdom, is developing new digital skills and has created his own mini radio station. Lockdown helped Öykü (25), a young filmmaker from Turkey, to concentrate on her creative projects. And for Joseph (30), a teacher from Nigeria, this time is a way to open up to lots of learning opportunities through webinars.

The crisis has changed not only the daily routine, but also perceptions of everyday life. For some young people rethinking the value of time and common moral principles appears to be key. 

“The biggest lesson for me is understanding … [the value of] time. During these last months I made more use of my time than in a past year.” - shares young tech entrepreneur Barbara (21), from Russia. Ravikumar (24), a civil engineer from India, believes  “This crisis makes us socialize more than ever. We are eating together, sharing our thoughts and playing together which happened rarely within my family before.”

Beyond the crisis

After massive upheavals in the lives of many people, the future for young people seems to be both a promising perspective to seize some new emerging opportunities, and a time filled with uncertainty about the crisis consequences and the future world order.

“It is giving us an opportunity to look into how we need to better support our vulnerable populations, in terms of food and educational resources”, says Anusha (19), from the United States of America. For Mahmoud (22), from Egypt, the COVID-19 crisis is a call to action: “After the pandemic, I will put a lot of efforts into helping people who have been affected by COVID-19. I am planning to improve their health by providing sports sessions, highlighting the importance of a healthy lifestyle.”

The COVID-19 pandemic brings uncertainty and instability to young people across the world, making them feel worried about this new reality they’re living in and presenting several new challenges every day, as they find themselves at the front line of the crisis. That is why, more than ever, we need to put the spotlight on young women and men and let their voice be heard! 

Be part of the campaign!

Join the  “MY COVID-19 Story” campaign! Tell us your story!

We will share it on  UNESCO’s social media channels  (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram), our  website,  and through our  networks  across the world. 

You can also share your testimonials by recording your own creative video! How? Sign up and create your video here:  https://zg8t9.app.goo.gl/Zw2i . 

• More information on the campaign

Related items

• SDG: SDG 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
• SDG: SDG 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
• SDG: SDG 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries
• See more add

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

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Are you looking to write a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic?

Writing a compelling and informative essay about this global crisis can be challenging. It requires researching the latest information, understanding the facts, and presenting your argument persuasively.

But don’t worry! with some guidance from experts, you’ll be able to write an effective and persuasive essay about Covid-19.

In this blog post, we’ll outline the basics of writing a persuasive essay . We’ll provide clear examples, helpful tips, and essential information for crafting your own persuasive piece on Covid-19.

Read on to get started on your essay.

• 1. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 2. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19
• 3. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine
• 4. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration
• 5. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19
• 6. Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19
• 7. Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 8. Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

• COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
• Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
• Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

• Introduction
• Background Information
• Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
• Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively. 

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources 

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback 

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

• The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
• Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
• The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
• The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
• Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
• The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
• The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
• Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
• The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

So don't hesitate and get in touch with our persuasive essay writing service today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

An essay contest asked D.C. students about challenges faced during the pandemic. There was loss, but also hope.

I was a judge in a recent essay contest for D.C. public and charter school students in fourth through ninth grades. The theme was about the challenges they faced during the pandemic, and I was reminded that the past year has put adult-size problems on the minds and bodies of the young.

“During the pandemic, what has been most challenging for me was when my parents, my uncle and I all got Covid , and then my uncle died,” wrote Brayan Rubio, a fifth-grader at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School at Park View. “Since then, I have learned a lot about myself and others, and what is important in life.”

Nile Grant Williams, a fifth-grader at Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School in the Fort Totten neighborhood, wrote: “Dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic is hard enough in itself. However, the injustice to black people has continued to be its own pandemic. Seeing the news and my mom and dad’s upset reaction watching the news was painful. This pain deeply concerned me because I saw myself in those people being killed. It could be me with a police officer’s knee on my neck. It could be me screaming for my mother saying, ‘I Can’t Breathe.’ ”

The “Celebration of Youth” essay contest has been held each year since 1988 and is organized by Dorothea and Jim Brady, stress management specialists who run the D.C.-based nonprofit Global Harmony Through Personal Excellence.

Dorothea Brady said they focused on fourth- through ninth-graders because few writing contests are held for that age group — roughly 9 to 15 years old. “That’s when values and life perspectives are being formed,” she said. “So we ask the youngsters questions such as, ‘What does personal integrity mean to you?’ and ‘What is a challenge and how did you handle it?’ It would be something they couldn’t research, something they would have to look within for the answers.”

Added Jim Brady: “We believe in self-reflection. Who are you becoming? What do you stand for?”

Yaritza Chavez-Ulloa, a fourth-grader at Barnard Elementary School in Petworth, wrote about her family coming together to overcome financial challenges after her father lost his job on a construction site amid cutbacks during the pandemic. Her mother, whom she’d been spending quality time with since stay-at-home orders were put in place, had to take a job cleaning a school and could no longer be home as much. One of her sisters got a job babysitting and dog walking; another got money for her quinceañera and shared it with the family.

“I also got money for my birthday and shared it,” Yaritza wrote. “The money we saved up as a family would go for buying food. We got used to our new routine, but I still missed seeing my mother like I used to.”

Many of the nation’s schoolchildren struggle with mental health

Samiya Williams, a ninth-grader at D.C. International School at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center, is the sister of Nile Grant Williams. She also wrote about the pandemic and race.

“The feeling of freedom being lost by the coronavirus has triggered my nail-biting habit as a result of stress,” she wrote. “However, the coronavirus pandemic is not the only thing I have to worry about — it is also being a young black woman in America. I am also concerned about the other pandemic that has been going on for centuries. Racism. COVID-19 has helped put emphasis on this and my response is to continue to fight against the abysmal treatment of black people that has plagued our community for over 400 years.”

Amy Eugene, a fourth-grader at Barnard Elementary School, found the bright side of the pandemic that had taken her out of school and away from her friends.

“Staying home has some benefits, such as getting my mom’s delicious food every single day for lunch and hanging out together,” she wrote. “Every morning I wake up, I am super excited for class and ready to learn new things.”

This year’s judges were Sam Ford, a veteran reporter with WJLA-TV; Hanna Rosin, a former colleague at The Washington Post who is now with New York Magazine; and me. Helene Krauthamer, head of the English department at the University of the District of Columbia, served as a volunteer tutor for students, and each student was sponsored by a teacher at their school.

The Bradys said they were inspired by the essays, as usual, but not surprised by the maturity of the young writers.

“Year after year, I’m impressed with how in very difficult circumstances many of them find their way, refusing to give up,” Dorothea Brady said. “This is about more than resilience; the strength of character is what comes through.”

There were 124 essays from students at 32 schools in this year’s contest. More than 60 students, including the ones I’ve mentioned, received modest monetary awards and certificates.

I was uplifted by all of them, although I wish none had to suffer through this awful pandemic and ongoing racial strife. Among the winners, I thought Brayan best captured the heartbreak of the pandemic.

The fifth-grader’s account of the pandemic sweeping through his family was compelling — losing his sense of taste and smell to covid-19, watching his mother in agony as she served him herbal teas and onion soups, and then seeing his father rush his uncle to the hospital, struggling for breath.

“Just two hours later, the phone rang with the terrible news that my uncle had died,” Brayan wrote. “We all broke into tears. Our ride was now to the funeral home.”

The virus took both parents

He had a message for his readers, a lesson he’d learned from the loss. “Everyone should shower love on one’s family,” he wrote. And he ended with an expression of hope: “If I win any prize money I would like to use it to help place a nicer headstone on my uncle’s gravesite.”

He got my vote.

And the Bradys my gratitude for more than three decades of a job well done.

To read previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/milloy .

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Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.”  Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences  57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.”  Prospects  49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.”  BioRxiv  (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.”  Jama  323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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For many U.S. moms, pandemic brought increase in time spent caring for kids while doing other things

The coronavirus pandemic created widespread child care challenges in the United States in 2020. Those difficulties lasted into 2021 for some parents, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data examining the way parents spent their time before and during the outbreak.

While there was relatively little change in the amount of time parents spent directly caring for their children between 2019 and 2020, the time they spent on secondary child care – that is, supervising their children while doing other things, such as working, doing chores or watching television – went up significantly.

And the increased time commitment on secondary care persisted into 2021 for one group of parents in particular: mothers with children ages 5 to 12, according to the analysis, which looks at time use data covering the 2019-2021 period.

This Pew Research Center analysis is based on data from the American Time Use Survey covering the 2019-2021 period and conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Microdata used in this analysis comes from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) provided by the University of Minnesota.

The analysis focuses on the time married and partnered parents spent on secondary child care, which the BLS defines as times when parents had at least one child under age 13 in their care while doing activities other than primary child care.

The sample used in this analysis includes married and partnered parents with minor children living in the household. Because secondary care is only reported for children under 13 years old, we only carry secondary care estimates for parents whose youngest child is younger than 13 years old. Full-time working parents are individuals working 35 hours or more per week. Finally, because American Time Use Survey data collection was interrupted during part of the first semester of 2020, we only use data from the second half of 2019, 2020 and 2021.

For mothers whose youngest child was age 5 to 12, average time spent on secondary care increased by about 2.5 hours from 2019 to 2020, from an average of 5.8 to 8.2 hours a day, before dipping to an average of 7.1 hours a day in 2021. The 2021 average was still considerably higher than before the onset of the pandemic, even as other aspects of life began to normalize in the outbreak’s second year.

Mothers with a youngest child age 4 or younger, by comparison, didn’t see a statistically significant increase in the time they spent on secondary child care in the 2019-2021 period.

As has long been the case, there are sizable gender differences in the amount of time that parents spend on child care. These patterns continued in 2020 and 2021, with fathers spending considerably less time than mothers on both primary and secondary child care.

Among fathers with a youngest child age 5 to 12, time in secondary care increased 1.2 hours from 2019 to 2020. However, for fathers whose youngest child was 4 or younger, time in secondary child care remained stable in this time span.

As a whole, parents with children younger than 13 saw an increase in time spent on secondary care in the first year of the pandemic. In 2019, fathers with children 12 or under spent an average of 4.5 hours on secondary child care. Fathers’ time increased to 5.3 hours in 2020 and then moved to an average of 4.8 hours in 2021. On average, moms spent 6.5 hours per day on secondary care in 2019, 7.9 hours in 2020 and 7.0 hours in 2021. 

Overall, full-time working parents spent less time on secondary child care than parents who do not work full time. For full-time working fathers, the amount of time spent providing this type of care stayed relatively stable from 2019 to 2020 and again from 2020 to 2021. Full-time working mothers, on the other hand, saw an increase during the first year of the pandemic (from an average of 5.0 to 7.1 hours per day) and then a trend back down in 2021 (an average 6.2 hours).

For many employed parents, the shift to remote work – along with interruptions in day care and schooling – likely contributed to the increased time they spent during the pandemic on secondary child care.

Other research has shown an increase in the amount of time mothers spent working while supervising their children in the first year of the pandemic, and the gender gap between mothers and fathers in this type of time use became considerably wider. These overlapping demands may help account for the added burden mothers have experienced over the past few years.

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Online religious services appeal to many americans, but going in person remains more popular, about a third of u.s. workers who can work from home now do so all the time, how the pandemic has affected attendance at u.s. religious services, mental health and the pandemic: what u.s. surveys have found, most popular.

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Next pandemic likely to be caused by flu virus, scientists warn

Influenza is still the biggest threat to global health as WHO raises fears about the spread of avian strain

Influenza is the pathogen most likely to trigger a new pandemic in the near future, according to leading scientists.

An international survey, to be published next weekend, will reveal that 57% of senior disease experts now think that a strain of flu virus will be the cause of the next global outbreak of deadly infectious illness .

The belief that influenza is the world’s greatest pandemic threat is based on long-term research showing it is constantly evolving and mutating, said Cologne University’s Jon Salmanton-García, who carried out the study.

“Each winter influenza appears,” he said. “You could describe these outbreaks as little pandemics. They are more or less controlled because the different strains that cause them are not virulent enough – but that will not necessarily be the case for ever.”

Details of the survey – which involved inputs from a total of 187 senior scientists – will be revealed at European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) congress in Barcelona next weekend.

The next most likely cause of a pandemic, after influenza, is likely to be a virus – dubbed Disease X – that is still unknown to science, according to 21% of the experts who took part in the study. They believe the next pandemic will be caused by an as-yet-to-be-identified micro-organism that will appear out of the blue, just as the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the cause of Covid-19 , did, when it started to infect humans in 2019.

Indeed, some scientists still believe Sars-CoV-2 remains a threat, with 15% of the scientists surveyed in the study rating it their most likely cause of a pandemic in the near future.

Other deadly micro-organisms – such as Lassa, Nipah, Ebola and Zika viruses – were rated as serious global threats by only 1% to 2% of respondents. “Influenza remained – by a very large degree, the number one threat in terms of its pandemic potential in the eyes of a large majority of world scientists,” added Salmanton-García.

Last week, the World Health Organization raised fears about the alarming spread of the H5N1 strain of influenza that is causing millions of cases of avian flu across the globe. This outbreak began in 2020 and has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry and has also wiped out millions of wild birds.

Most recently, the virus has spread to mammal species, including domestic cattle which are now infected in 12 states in the US, further increasing fears about the risks to humans. The more mammalian species the virus infects, the more opportunities it has to evolve into a strain that is dangerous to humans, Daniel Goldhill, of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, told the journal Nature last week.

The appearance of the H5N1 virus in cattle was a surprise, added virologist Ed Hutchinson, of Glasgow University. “Pigs can get avian flu but until recently cattle did not. They were infected with their own strains of the disease. So the appearance of H5N1 in cows was a shock.

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“It means that the risks of the virus getting into more and more farm animals, and then from farm animals into humans just gets higher and higher. The more the virus spreads, then the chances of it mutating so it can spread into humans goes up and up. Basically, we are rolling the dice with this virus.”

To date, there has been no indication that H5N1 is spreading between humans. But in hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, the impact has been grim. “The mortality rate is extraordinarily high because humans have no natural immunity to the virus”, said Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist of the World Health Organization.

The prospect of a flu pandemic is alarming, although scientists also point out that vaccines against many strains, including H5N1, have already been developed. “If there was an avian flu pandemic it would still be a massive logistical challenge to produce vaccines at the scale and speed that will be needed. However, we would be much further down that road than we were with Covid-19 when a vaccine had to be developed from scratch,” said Hutchinson.

Nevertheless, some lessons of preventing disease spread have been forgotten since the end of the Covid pandemic, said Salmanton-García. “People have gone back to coughing into their hands and then shaking hands with other people. Mask-wearing has disappeared. We are going back to our old bad habits. We may come to regret that.”

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As the Des Moines metro grows, so is the amount of OT its suburban police officers are logging

For West Des Moines Police Department Sgt. Jason Bryan, driving traffic patrol on a Thursday afternoon in late March, working more than 40 hours a week is just part of policing.

But the rapid growth of Des Moines' suburbs — meaning more people who call for help and more streets to patrol — and continued staffing issues have left some metro departments stretching their resources and officers.

In the past four years, police officers in four metro departments — Clive, Johnston, Urbandale and West Des Moines — together logged more than 35,000 hours of overtime, according to a Des Moines Register review of data from each department. Ankeny and Waukee, which reported figures in dollars, spent more than $767,700 on overtime from 2020 to 2023.

"You can try to do the best you can not to have a lot" of overtime but it's typically a regular occurrence, depending on the week or the time of year, Bryan said.

Every patrol shift needs a minimum level of staffing so officers can have backup as well as be able to handle all the calls for service, from car crashes to serious crimes. Every crime scene requires officers to stay until it's cleared. And officers get sick, take vacations or parental leave, or have to recover from injuries.

That all leaves gaps — hours — that have to be filled.

"It's just the nature of the beast," Bryan said.

But overtime can take a toll on police officers and their policing, increasing the risks that officers will be involved in lawsuits, be the subject of complaints and resort to using force, as well as face a higher chance of injury, according to an inspection of the largest police department in the United States.

The Register's analysis comes at a time when cities like West Des Moines are weighing how to handle the stress of overtime. A recent consultant's report said overtime is "taxing" the city's officers and suggested reshuffling the department to reduce the hours its patrol officers work.

Rapid suburban growth around Des Moines presents challenges to police: 'You feel like you're kind of behind all the time.'

As the COVID-19 pandemic reached Iowa in 2020 and people didn't leave home as much, many police departments saw a dip in the overall number of calls for service. But there's only been an upward trend since — and police officials said that also has to do with the rapid growth of the suburbs, as well as the end of the pandemic.

The six-county Des Moines metro added more than 27,600 people to its population from 2020 to 2023, growing to more than 737,000 residents and retaining its status as the fastest-growing large metropolitan area in the Midwest , according to U.S. Census data.

Mandatory overtime costs or hours among suburban police departments in the metro grew even faster in some areas.

From 2020 to 2023, there was a 65% increase in mandatory overtime costs in Ankeny and a 42% increase in Waukee. During the same years in Johnston there was a 91% increase in mandatory overtime hours, and in West Des Moines, a 97% increase.

Spokespeople for the Dallas County Sheriff's Office and Altoona Police Department said their agencies do not mandate overtime. Attempts to get data from the Polk County Sheriff's Office and Windsor Heights Police Department were cost prohibitive. And the Des Moines Police Department did not respond to a request for mandatory overtime data.

Growth in the number of people, homes and businesses in an area generally means there are more calls for police to respond to and more places to patrol.

"We have more people using Raccoon River Park, we have more people visiting our city for our various entertainment venues and we are a growing city," West Des Moines Police Chief Chris Scott said in an email. "With growth unfortunately comes a certain percentage of problems."

More: Iowa bill to change police complaints, decertification advances as chiefs air concerns

Another challenge of quick growth is that while in theory it means more tax revenue to allow departments to hire more officers, there's a lag between people moving in and businesses opening and revenue being realized in budgets, Bryan said.

"You feel like you're kind of behind all the time," he said.

And hiring is not so simple anymore. Bryan — who supervises a special operations unit whose activities include hit and run and fatality crash investigations, bike patrols and school resource officers — said there are a lot fewer applicants for open positions than there used to be.

The U.S. Department of Justice noted last year that police departments nationwide faced a "historic crisis in recruiting and retaining" officers because of a tight labor market during the pandemic and community frustrations .

Metro area departments were facing staffing issues years before the pandemic and fallout from the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 by a Minneapolis Police Department officer — and staffing continues to be a challenge that officials said is at least partly behind increases in overtime.

Overtime and staffing issues challenge police officers' wellness and police departments' budgets

In West Des Moines, a private consultant's analysis of the police department's structure, workload and staffing needs noted "the impact of the overtime that is often necessary to meet minimum staffing is taxing many members of the department."

The report, conducted by Center for Public Safety Management LLC and presented to the West Des Moines City Council in February, also noted a majority of the department's traffic enforcement was being done with overtime shifts paid for by traffic safety grants, with a focus on speed and occupant safety violations.

Bryan said the Iowa Governor's Traffic Safety Bureau is available to pay overtime for departments' traffic enforcement and that it allows his unit to get more done than it otherwise could.

"Funding overtime is the cost of services provided," Scott added. "We could choose to cut our overtime activity but that is a service reduction to our city and the impact would be extremely negative."

But is he worried about recent changes in state policies that will cap tax growth and challenge city budgets going forward, especially a city like West Des Moines that is growing, which could ultimately mean his department would have to do more with less.

“The money’s got to come from some place,” or there might be some services that have to be stopped, Scott said.

More: Des Moines, other cities say Iowa's tax changes have left budget holes, no room for growth

The Center for Public Safety Management noted "the decision on how to properly staff patrol is the single largest management decision that should be made" based on its report. While the consultant recommended that patrol staffing in West Des Moines be increased to better distribute workload and reduce overtime, "this recommendation falls short of recommending an overall increase in the size of the West Des Moines Police Department." Instead, the consultant suggested internally shifting officers or perhaps hiring civilian workers.

Janet Wilwerding, spokesperson for Johnston, said in an email that staffing vacancies account for much of the overtime increase there. Typically, money saved from vacancies is transferred to pay for overtime, she said, but that still leads to tough cuts to programs, specialized trainings or outreach initiatives.

"In 2023, we greatly reduced our summer bike patrol program hours due to limited staffing on patrol and using overtime funds to offset essential patrol services," Wilwerding said.

The spokesperson for the Ankeny Police Department and the chief of the Waukee Police Department said overtime costs have not strained their departments' budgets.

Still, overtime can stretch individual officers as well as their departments, and that can result in bad outcomes for officers and the communities they serve.

A May 2023 report by the Office of the Inspector General for the New York City Police Department found that even one hour of overtime increased an officer's odds of being involved with negative policing outcomes — including lawsuits, civilian complaints of misconduct, uses of force, vehicle crashes and workplace injuries.

"Those odds continue to increase as an officer works more overtime hours consecutively," the report noted.

One metro department has gone the opposite direction

The Urbandale Police Department has managed to scale back the number of overtime hours its officers have logged, despite the a higher call volume than before the pandemic and an ongoing staff shortage. It saw a huge increase to 348 overtime hours in 2020 from just 96 the year prior. The department was back down to 132 hours last year.

"In general, our officers are not wanting to work overtime, so we do what we can to limit mandatory (overtime) by adjusting work schedules when needed to meet minimums" on the department's 12-hour patrol shifts, Urbandale Police Chief Rob Johansen said.

"We have delayed increasing our minimum staffing on patrol trying not to overwork our current officers," Johansen added.

He said the department was down 10 officers in 2020 and 2021 due to resignations and retirements. The department is now down to nine vacancies, and overtime still is being used to cover those open positions.

Urbandale Police Department Officer Kelsie Stone said overtime is nothing bad to her.

"It's just part of (the job) to me," said Stone, who is two years into her first job.

Bryan — who has been in law enforcement full-time in the metro for 29 years, 26 of them in West Des Moines — said the amount of overtime he's working hasn't changed that much in recent years.

He's learned some things to offer as advice for handling the physical and emotional demands of the job: "You have to have hobbies outside work," as well as a strong personal network of family and friends and peer support within the department.

Bryan also said officers have to stay in shape physically and mentally, have to be able to listen to their bodies and be able to ask for help when they need it. And don't forget the caffeine — ice tea is his drink of choice.

Phillip Sitter covers the western suburbs for the Des Moines Register. Phillip can be reached via email at [email protected] or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @pslifeisabeauty.

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Students’ online learning challenges during the pandemic and how they cope with them: The case of the Philippines

Jessie s. barrot.

College of Education, Arts and Sciences, National University, Manila, Philippines

Ian I. Llenares

Leo s. del rosario, associated data.

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis that has shaken up its foundation. Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many studies have investigated this area, limited information is available regarding the challenges and the specific strategies that students employ to overcome them. Thus, this study attempts to fill in the void. Using a mixed-methods approach, the findings revealed that the online learning challenges of college students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. The findings further revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had the greatest impact on the quality of the learning experience and students’ mental health. In terms of strategies employed by students, the most frequently used were resource management and utilization, help-seeking, technical aptitude enhancement, time management, and learning environment control. Implications for classroom practice, policy-making, and future research are discussed.

Introduction

Since the 1990s, the world has seen significant changes in the landscape of education as a result of the ever-expanding influence of technology. One such development is the adoption of online learning across different learning contexts, whether formal or informal, academic and non-academic, and residential or remotely. We began to witness schools, teachers, and students increasingly adopt e-learning technologies that allow teachers to deliver instruction interactively, share resources seamlessly, and facilitate student collaboration and interaction (Elaish et al., 2019 ; Garcia et al., 2018 ). Although the efficacy of online learning has long been acknowledged by the education community (Barrot, 2020 , 2021 ; Cavanaugh et al., 2009 ; Kebritchi et al., 2017 ; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006 ; Wallace, 2003 ), evidence on the challenges in its implementation continues to build up (e.g., Boelens et al., 2017 ; Rasheed et al., 2020 ).

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic) that has shaken up its foundation. Thus, various governments across the globe have launched a crisis response to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic on education. This response includes, but is not limited to, curriculum revisions, provision for technological resources and infrastructure, shifts in the academic calendar, and policies on instructional delivery and assessment. Inevitably, these developments compelled educational institutions to migrate to full online learning until face-to-face instruction is allowed. The current circumstance is unique as it could aggravate the challenges experienced during online learning due to restrictions in movement and health protocols (Gonzales et al., 2020 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, many studies have investigated this area with a focus on students’ mental health (Copeland et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ), home learning (Suryaman et al., 2020 ), self-regulation (Carter et al., 2020 ), virtual learning environment (Almaiah et al., 2020 ; Hew et al., 2020 ; Tang et al., 2020 ), and students’ overall learning experience (e.g., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ). There are two key differences that set the current study apart from the previous studies. First, it sheds light on the direct impact of the pandemic on the challenges that students experience in an online learning space. Second, the current study explores students’ coping strategies in this new learning setup. Addressing these areas would shed light on the extent of challenges that students experience in a full online learning space, particularly within the context of the pandemic. Meanwhile, our nuanced understanding of the strategies that students use to overcome their challenges would provide relevant information to school administrators and teachers to better support the online learning needs of students. This information would also be critical in revisiting the typology of strategies in an online learning environment.

Literature review

Education and the covid-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, occurred in China and has spread rapidly across the globe within a few months. COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus that attacks the respiratory system (World Health Organization, 2020 ). As of January 2021, COVID-19 has infected 94 million people and has caused 2 million deaths in 191 countries and territories (John Hopkins University, 2021 ). This pandemic has created a massive disruption of the educational systems, affecting over 1.5 billion students. It has forced the government to cancel national examinations and the schools to temporarily close, cease face-to-face instruction, and strictly observe physical distancing. These events have sparked the digital transformation of higher education and challenged its ability to respond promptly and effectively. Schools adopted relevant technologies, prepared learning and staff resources, set systems and infrastructure, established new teaching protocols, and adjusted their curricula. However, the transition was smooth for some schools but rough for others, particularly those from developing countries with limited infrastructure (Pham & Nguyen, 2020 ; Simbulan, 2020 ).

Inevitably, schools and other learning spaces were forced to migrate to full online learning as the world continues the battle to control the vicious spread of the virus. Online learning refers to a learning environment that uses the Internet and other technological devices and tools for synchronous and asynchronous instructional delivery and management of academic programs (Usher & Barak, 2020 ; Huang, 2019 ). Synchronous online learning involves real-time interactions between the teacher and the students, while asynchronous online learning occurs without a strict schedule for different students (Singh & Thurman, 2019 ). Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has taken the status of interim remote teaching that serves as a response to an exigency. However, the migration to a new learning space has faced several major concerns relating to policy, pedagogy, logistics, socioeconomic factors, technology, and psychosocial factors (Donitsa-Schmidt & Ramot, 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Varea & González-Calvo, 2020 ). With reference to policies, government education agencies and schools scrambled to create fool-proof policies on governance structure, teacher management, and student management. Teachers, who were used to conventional teaching delivery, were also obliged to embrace technology despite their lack of technological literacy. To address this problem, online learning webinars and peer support systems were launched. On the part of the students, dropout rates increased due to economic, psychological, and academic reasons. Academically, although it is virtually possible for students to learn anything online, learning may perhaps be less than optimal, especially in courses that require face-to-face contact and direct interactions (Franchi, 2020 ).

Related studies

Recently, there has been an explosion of studies relating to the new normal in education. While many focused on national policies, professional development, and curriculum, others zeroed in on the specific learning experience of students during the pandemic. Among these are Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ) who examined the impact of COVID-19 on college students’ mental health and their coping mechanisms. Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) reported that the pandemic adversely affected students’ behavioral and emotional functioning, particularly attention and externalizing problems (i.e., mood and wellness behavior), which were caused by isolation, economic/health effects, and uncertainties. In Fawaz et al.’s ( 2021 ) study, students raised their concerns on learning and evaluation methods, overwhelming task load, technical difficulties, and confinement. To cope with these problems, students actively dealt with the situation by seeking help from their teachers and relatives and engaging in recreational activities. These active-oriented coping mechanisms of students were aligned with Carter et al.’s ( 2020 ), who explored students’ self-regulation strategies.

In another study, Tang et al. ( 2020 ) examined the efficacy of different online teaching modes among engineering students. Using a questionnaire, the results revealed that students were dissatisfied with online learning in general, particularly in the aspect of communication and question-and-answer modes. Nonetheless, the combined model of online teaching with flipped classrooms improved students’ attention, academic performance, and course evaluation. A parallel study was undertaken by Hew et al. ( 2020 ), who transformed conventional flipped classrooms into fully online flipped classes through a cloud-based video conferencing app. Their findings suggested that these two types of learning environments were equally effective. They also offered ways on how to effectively adopt videoconferencing-assisted online flipped classrooms. Unlike the two studies, Suryaman et al. ( 2020 ) looked into how learning occurred at home during the pandemic. Their findings showed that students faced many obstacles in a home learning environment, such as lack of mastery of technology, high Internet cost, and limited interaction/socialization between and among students. In a related study, Kapasia et al. ( 2020 ) investigated how lockdown impacts students’ learning performance. Their findings revealed that the lockdown made significant disruptions in students’ learning experience. The students also reported some challenges that they faced during their online classes. These include anxiety, depression, poor Internet service, and unfavorable home learning environment, which were aggravated when students are marginalized and from remote areas. Contrary to Kapasia et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings, Gonzales et al. ( 2020 ) found that confinement of students during the pandemic had significant positive effects on their performance. They attributed these results to students’ continuous use of learning strategies which, in turn, improved their learning efficiency.

Finally, there are those that focused on students’ overall online learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. One such study was that of Singh et al. ( 2020 ), who examined students’ experience during the COVID-19 pandemic using a quantitative descriptive approach. Their findings indicated that students appreciated the use of online learning during the pandemic. However, half of them believed that the traditional classroom setting was more effective than the online learning platform. Methodologically, the researchers acknowledge that the quantitative nature of their study restricts a deeper interpretation of the findings. Unlike the above study, Khalil et al. ( 2020 ) qualitatively explored the efficacy of synchronized online learning in a medical school in Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that students generally perceive synchronous online learning positively, particularly in terms of time management and efficacy. However, they also reported technical (internet connectivity and poor utility of tools), methodological (content delivery), and behavioral (individual personality) challenges. Their findings also highlighted the failure of the online learning environment to address the needs of courses that require hands-on practice despite efforts to adopt virtual laboratories. In a parallel study, Adarkwah ( 2021 ) examined students’ online learning experience during the pandemic using a narrative inquiry approach. The findings indicated that Ghanaian students considered online learning as ineffective due to several challenges that they encountered. Among these were lack of social interaction among students, poor communication, lack of ICT resources, and poor learning outcomes. More recently, Day et al. ( 2021 ) examined the immediate impact of COVID-19 on students’ learning experience. Evidence from six institutions across three countries revealed some positive experiences and pre-existing inequities. Among the reported challenges are lack of appropriate devices, poor learning space at home, stress among students, and lack of fieldwork and access to laboratories.

Although there are few studies that report the online learning challenges that higher education students experience during the pandemic, limited information is available regarding the specific strategies that they use to overcome them. It is in this context that the current study was undertaken. This mixed-methods study investigates students’ online learning experience in higher education. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What is the extent of challenges that students experience in an online learning environment? (2) How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the online learning challenges that students experience? (3) What strategies did students use to overcome the challenges?

Conceptual framework

The typology of challenges examined in this study is largely based on Rasheed et al.’s ( 2020 ) review of students’ experience in an online learning environment. These challenges are grouped into five general clusters, namely self-regulation (SRC), technological literacy and competency (TLCC), student isolation (SIC), technological sufficiency (TSC), and technological complexity (TCC) challenges (Rasheed et al., 2020 , p. 5). SRC refers to a set of behavior by which students exercise control over their emotions, actions, and thoughts to achieve learning objectives. TLCC relates to a set of challenges about students’ ability to effectively use technology for learning purposes. SIC relates to the emotional discomfort that students experience as a result of being lonely and secluded from their peers. TSC refers to a set of challenges that students experience when accessing available online technologies for learning. Finally, there is TCC which involves challenges that students experience when exposed to complex and over-sufficient technologies for online learning.

To extend Rasheed et al. ( 2020 ) categories and to cover other potential challenges during online classes, two more clusters were added, namely learning resource challenges (LRC) and learning environment challenges (LEC) (Buehler, 2004 ; Recker et al., 2004 ; Seplaki et al., 2014 ; Xue et al., 2020 ). LRC refers to a set of challenges that students face relating to their use of library resources and instructional materials, whereas LEC is a set of challenges that students experience related to the condition of their learning space that shapes their learning experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. Since learning environment at home and learning resources available to students has been reported to significantly impact the quality of learning and their achievement of learning outcomes (Drane et al., 2020 ; Suryaman et al., 2020 ), the inclusion of LRC and LEC would allow us to capture other important challenges that students experience during the pandemic, particularly those from developing regions. This comprehensive list would provide us a clearer and detailed picture of students’ experiences when engaged in online learning in an emergency. Given the restrictions in mobility at macro and micro levels during the pandemic, it is also expected that such conditions would aggravate these challenges. Therefore, this paper intends to understand these challenges from students’ perspectives since they are the ones that are ultimately impacted when the issue is about the learning experience. We also seek to explore areas that provide inconclusive findings, thereby setting the path for future research.

Material and methods

The present study adopted a descriptive, mixed-methods approach to address the research questions. This approach allowed the researchers to collect complex data about students’ experience in an online learning environment and to clearly understand the phenomena from their perspective.

Participants

This study involved 200 (66 male and 134 female) students from a private higher education institution in the Philippines. These participants were Psychology, Physical Education, and Sports Management majors whose ages ranged from 17 to 25 ( x ̅  = 19.81; SD  = 1.80). The students have been engaged in online learning for at least two terms in both synchronous and asynchronous modes. The students belonged to low- and middle-income groups but were equipped with the basic online learning equipment (e.g., computer, headset, speakers) and computer skills necessary for their participation in online classes. Table ​ Table1 1 shows the primary and secondary platforms that students used during their online classes. The primary platforms are those that are formally adopted by teachers and students in a structured academic context, whereas the secondary platforms are those that are informally and spontaneously used by students and teachers for informal learning and to supplement instructional delivery. Note that almost all students identified MS Teams as their primary platform because it is the official learning management system of the university.

Participants’ Online Learning Platforms

Informed consent was sought from the participants prior to their involvement. Before students signed the informed consent form, they were oriented about the objectives of the study and the extent of their involvement. They were also briefed about the confidentiality of information, their anonymity, and their right to refuse to participate in the investigation. Finally, the participants were informed that they would incur no additional cost from their participation.

Instrument and data collection

The data were collected using a retrospective self-report questionnaire and a focused group discussion (FGD). A self-report questionnaire was considered appropriate because the indicators relate to affective responses and attitude (Araujo et al., 2017 ; Barrot, 2016 ; Spector, 1994 ). Although the participants may tell more than what they know or do in a self-report survey (Matsumoto, 1994 ), this challenge was addressed by explaining to them in detail each of the indicators and using methodological triangulation through FGD. The questionnaire was divided into four sections: (1) participant’s personal information section, (2) the background information on the online learning environment, (3) the rating scale section for the online learning challenges, (4) the open-ended section. The personal information section asked about the students’ personal information (name, school, course, age, and sex), while the background information section explored the online learning mode and platforms (primary and secondary) used in class, and students’ length of engagement in online classes. The rating scale section contained 37 items that relate to SRC (6 items), TLCC (10 items), SIC (4 items), TSC (6 items), TCC (3 items), LRC (4 items), and LEC (4 items). The Likert scale uses six scores (i.e., 5– to a very great extent , 4– to a great extent , 3– to a moderate extent , 2– to some extent , 1– to a small extent , and 0 –not at all/negligible ) assigned to each of the 37 items. Finally, the open-ended questions asked about other challenges that students experienced, the impact of the pandemic on the intensity or extent of the challenges they experienced, and the strategies that the participants employed to overcome the eight different types of challenges during online learning. Two experienced educators and researchers reviewed the questionnaire for clarity, accuracy, and content and face validity. The piloting of the instrument revealed that the tool had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.96).

The FGD protocol contains two major sections: the participants’ background information and the main questions. The background information section asked about the students’ names, age, courses being taken, online learning mode used in class. The items in the main questions section covered questions relating to the students’ overall attitude toward online learning during the pandemic, the reasons for the scores they assigned to each of the challenges they experienced, the impact of the pandemic on students’ challenges, and the strategies they employed to address the challenges. The same experts identified above validated the FGD protocol.

Both the questionnaire and the FGD were conducted online via Google survey and MS Teams, respectively. It took approximately 20 min to complete the questionnaire, while the FGD lasted for about 90 min. Students were allowed to ask for clarification and additional explanations relating to the questionnaire content, FGD, and procedure. Online surveys and interview were used because of the ongoing lockdown in the city. For the purpose of triangulation, 20 (10 from Psychology and 10 from Physical Education and Sports Management) randomly selected students were invited to participate in the FGD. Two separate FGDs were scheduled for each group and were facilitated by researcher 2 and researcher 3, respectively. The interviewers ensured that the participants were comfortable and open to talk freely during the FGD to avoid social desirability biases (Bergen & Labonté, 2020 ). These were done by informing the participants that there are no wrong responses and that their identity and responses would be handled with the utmost confidentiality. With the permission of the participants, the FGD was recorded to ensure that all relevant information was accurately captured for transcription and analysis.

Data analysis

To address the research questions, we used both quantitative and qualitative analyses. For the quantitative analysis, we entered all the data into an excel spreadsheet. Then, we computed the mean scores ( M ) and standard deviations ( SD ) to determine the level of challenges experienced by students during online learning. The mean score for each descriptor was interpreted using the following scheme: 4.18 to 5.00 ( to a very great extent ), 3.34 to 4.17 ( to a great extent ), 2.51 to 3.33 ( to a moderate extent ), 1.68 to 2.50 ( to some extent ), 0.84 to 1.67 ( to a small extent ), and 0 to 0.83 ( not at all/negligible ). The equal interval was adopted because it produces more reliable and valid information than other types of scales (Cicchetti et al., 2006 ).

For the qualitative data, we analyzed the students’ responses in the open-ended questions and the transcribed FGD using the predetermined categories in the conceptual framework. Specifically, we used multilevel coding in classifying the codes from the transcripts (Birks & Mills, 2011 ). To do this, we identified the relevant codes from the responses of the participants and categorized these codes based on the similarities or relatedness of their properties and dimensions. Then, we performed a constant comparative and progressive analysis of cases to allow the initially identified subcategories to emerge and take shape. To ensure the reliability of the analysis, two coders independently analyzed the qualitative data. Both coders familiarize themselves with the purpose, research questions, research method, and codes and coding scheme of the study. They also had a calibration session and discussed ways on how they could consistently analyze the qualitative data. Percent of agreement between the two coders was 86 percent. Any disagreements in the analysis were discussed by the coders until an agreement was achieved.

This study investigated students’ online learning experience in higher education within the context of the pandemic. Specifically, we identified the extent of challenges that students experienced, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their online learning experience, and the strategies that they used to confront these challenges.

The extent of students’ online learning challenges

Table ​ Table2 2 presents the mean scores and SD for the extent of challenges that students’ experienced during online learning. Overall, the students experienced the identified challenges to a moderate extent ( x ̅  = 2.62, SD  = 1.03) with scores ranging from x ̅  = 1.72 ( to some extent ) to x ̅  = 3.58 ( to a great extent ). More specifically, the greatest challenge that students experienced was related to the learning environment ( x ̅  = 3.49, SD  = 1.27), particularly on distractions at home, limitations in completing the requirements for certain subjects, and difficulties in selecting the learning areas and study schedule. It is, however, found that the least challenge was on technological literacy and competency ( x ̅  = 2.10, SD  = 1.13), particularly on knowledge and training in the use of technology, technological intimidation, and resistance to learning technologies. Other areas that students experienced the least challenge are Internet access under TSC and procrastination under SRC. Nonetheless, nearly half of the students’ responses per indicator rated the challenges they experienced as moderate (14 of the 37 indicators), particularly in TCC ( x ̅  = 2.51, SD  = 1.31), SIC ( x ̅  = 2.77, SD  = 1.34), and LRC ( x ̅  = 2.93, SD  = 1.31).

The Extent of Students’ Challenges during the Interim Online Learning

Out of 200 students, 181 responded to the question about other challenges that they experienced. Most of their responses were already covered by the seven predetermined categories, except for 18 responses related to physical discomfort ( N  = 5) and financial challenges ( N  = 13). For instance, S108 commented that “when it comes to eyes and head, my eyes and head get ache if the session of class was 3 h straight in front of my gadget.” In the same vein, S194 reported that “the long exposure to gadgets especially laptop, resulting in body pain & headaches.” With reference to physical financial challenges, S66 noted that “not all the time I have money to load”, while S121 claimed that “I don't know until when are we going to afford budgeting our money instead of buying essentials.”

Impact of the pandemic on students’ online learning challenges

Another objective of this study was to identify how COVID-19 influenced the online learning challenges that students experienced. As shown in Table ​ Table3, 3 , most of the students’ responses were related to teaching and learning quality ( N  = 86) and anxiety and other mental health issues ( N  = 52). Regarding the adverse impact on teaching and learning quality, most of the comments relate to the lack of preparation for the transition to online platforms (e.g., S23, S64), limited infrastructure (e.g., S13, S65, S99, S117), and poor Internet service (e.g., S3, S9, S17, S41, S65, S99). For the anxiety and mental health issues, most students reported that the anxiety, boredom, sadness, and isolation they experienced had adversely impacted the way they learn (e.g., S11, S130), completing their tasks/activities (e.g., S56, S156), and their motivation to continue studying (e.g., S122, S192). The data also reveal that COVID-19 aggravated the financial difficulties experienced by some students ( N  = 16), consequently affecting their online learning experience. This financial impact mainly revolved around the lack of funding for their online classes as a result of their parents’ unemployment and the high cost of Internet data (e.g., S18, S113, S167). Meanwhile, few concerns were raised in relation to COVID-19’s impact on mobility ( N  = 7) and face-to-face interactions ( N  = 7). For instance, some commented that the lack of face-to-face interaction with her classmates had a detrimental effect on her learning (S46) and socialization skills (S36), while others reported that restrictions in mobility limited their learning experience (S78, S110). Very few comments were related to no effect ( N  = 4) and positive effect ( N  = 2). The above findings suggest the pandemic had additive adverse effects on students’ online learning experience.

Summary of students’ responses on the impact of COVID-19 on their online learning experience

Students’ strategies to overcome challenges in an online learning environment

The third objective of this study is to identify the strategies that students employed to overcome the different online learning challenges they experienced. Table ​ Table4 4 presents that the most commonly used strategies used by students were resource management and utilization ( N  = 181), help-seeking ( N  = 155), technical aptitude enhancement ( N  = 122), time management ( N  = 98), and learning environment control ( N  = 73). Not surprisingly, the top two strategies were also the most consistently used across different challenges. However, looking closely at each of the seven challenges, the frequency of using a particular strategy varies. For TSC and LRC, the most frequently used strategy was resource management and utilization ( N  = 52, N  = 89, respectively), whereas technical aptitude enhancement was the students’ most preferred strategy to address TLCC ( N  = 77) and TCC ( N  = 38). In the case of SRC, SIC, and LEC, the most frequently employed strategies were time management ( N  = 71), psychological support ( N  = 53), and learning environment control ( N  = 60). In terms of consistency, help-seeking appears to be the most consistent across the different challenges in an online learning environment. Table ​ Table4 4 further reveals that strategies used by students within a specific type of challenge vary.

Students’ Strategies to Overcome Online Learning Challenges

Discussion and conclusions

The current study explores the challenges that students experienced in an online learning environment and how the pandemic impacted their online learning experience. The findings revealed that the online learning challenges of students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. Based on the students’ responses, their challenges were also found to be aggravated by the pandemic, especially in terms of quality of learning experience, mental health, finances, interaction, and mobility. With reference to previous studies (i.e., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Copeland et al., 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ), the current study has complemented their findings on the pedagogical, logistical, socioeconomic, technological, and psychosocial online learning challenges that students experience within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, this study extended previous studies and our understanding of students’ online learning experience by identifying both the presence and extent of online learning challenges and by shedding light on the specific strategies they employed to overcome them.

Overall findings indicate that the extent of challenges and strategies varied from one student to another. Hence, they should be viewed as a consequence of interaction several many factors. Students’ responses suggest that their online learning challenges and strategies were mediated by the resources available to them, their interaction with their teachers and peers, and the school’s existing policies and guidelines for online learning. In the context of the pandemic, the imposed lockdowns and students’ socioeconomic condition aggravated the challenges that students experience.

While most studies revealed that technology use and competency were the most common challenges that students face during the online classes (see Rasheed et al., 2020 ), the case is a bit different in developing countries in times of pandemic. As the findings have shown, the learning environment is the greatest challenge that students needed to hurdle, particularly distractions at home (e.g., noise) and limitations in learning space and facilities. This data suggests that online learning challenges during the pandemic somehow vary from the typical challenges that students experience in a pre-pandemic online learning environment. One possible explanation for this result is that restriction in mobility may have aggravated this challenge since they could not go to the school or other learning spaces beyond the vicinity of their respective houses. As shown in the data, the imposition of lockdown restricted students’ learning experience (e.g., internship and laboratory experiments), limited their interaction with peers and teachers, caused depression, stress, and anxiety among students, and depleted the financial resources of those who belong to lower-income group. All of these adversely impacted students’ learning experience. This finding complemented earlier reports on the adverse impact of lockdown on students’ learning experience and the challenges posed by the home learning environment (e.g., Day et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Nonetheless, further studies are required to validate the impact of restrictions on mobility on students’ online learning experience. The second reason that may explain the findings relates to students’ socioeconomic profile. Consistent with the findings of Adarkwah ( 2021 ) and Day et al. ( 2021 ), the current study reveals that the pandemic somehow exposed the many inequities in the educational systems within and across countries. In the case of a developing country, families from lower socioeconomic strata (as in the case of the students in this study) have limited learning space at home, access to quality Internet service, and online learning resources. This is the reason the learning environment and learning resources recorded the highest level of challenges. The socioeconomic profile of the students (i.e., low and middle-income group) is the same reason financial problems frequently surfaced from their responses. These students frequently linked the lack of financial resources to their access to the Internet, educational materials, and equipment necessary for online learning. Therefore, caution should be made when interpreting and extending the findings of this study to other contexts, particularly those from higher socioeconomic strata.

Among all the different online learning challenges, the students experienced the least challenge on technological literacy and competency. This is not surprising considering a plethora of research confirming Gen Z students’ (born since 1996) high technological and digital literacy (Barrot, 2018 ; Ng, 2012 ; Roblek et al., 2019 ). Regarding the impact of COVID-19 on students’ online learning experience, the findings reveal that teaching and learning quality and students’ mental health were the most affected. The anxiety that students experienced does not only come from the threats of COVID-19 itself but also from social and physical restrictions, unfamiliarity with new learning platforms, technical issues, and concerns about financial resources. These findings are consistent with that of Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ), who reported the adverse effects of the pandemic on students’ mental and emotional well-being. This data highlights the need to provide serious attention to the mediating effects of mental health, restrictions in mobility, and preparedness in delivering online learning.

Nonetheless, students employed a variety of strategies to overcome the challenges they faced during online learning. For instance, to address the home learning environment problems, students talked to their family (e.g., S12, S24), transferred to a quieter place (e.g., S7, S 26), studied at late night where all family members are sleeping already (e.g., S51), and consulted with their classmates and teachers (e.g., S3, S9, S156, S193). To overcome the challenges in learning resources, students used the Internet (e.g., S20, S27, S54, S91), joined Facebook groups that share free resources (e.g., S5), asked help from family members (e.g., S16), used resources available at home (e.g., S32), and consulted with the teachers (e.g., S124). The varying strategies of students confirmed earlier reports on the active orientation that students take when faced with academic- and non-academic-related issues in an online learning space (see Fawaz et al., 2021 ). The specific strategies that each student adopted may have been shaped by different factors surrounding him/her, such as available resources, student personality, family structure, relationship with peers and teacher, and aptitude. To expand this study, researchers may further investigate this area and explore how and why different factors shape their use of certain strategies.

Several implications can be drawn from the findings of this study. First, this study highlighted the importance of emergency response capability and readiness of higher education institutions in case another crisis strikes again. Critical areas that need utmost attention include (but not limited to) national and institutional policies, protocol and guidelines, technological infrastructure and resources, instructional delivery, staff development, potential inequalities, and collaboration among key stakeholders (i.e., parents, students, teachers, school leaders, industry, government education agencies, and community). Second, the findings have expanded our understanding of the different challenges that students might confront when we abruptly shift to full online learning, particularly those from countries with limited resources, poor Internet infrastructure, and poor home learning environment. Schools with a similar learning context could use the findings of this study in developing and enhancing their respective learning continuity plans to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic. This study would also provide students relevant information needed to reflect on the possible strategies that they may employ to overcome the challenges. These are critical information necessary for effective policymaking, decision-making, and future implementation of online learning. Third, teachers may find the results useful in providing proper interventions to address the reported challenges, particularly in the most critical areas. Finally, the findings provided us a nuanced understanding of the interdependence of learning tools, learners, and learning outcomes within an online learning environment; thus, giving us a multiperspective of hows and whys of a successful migration to full online learning.

Some limitations in this study need to be acknowledged and addressed in future studies. One limitation of this study is that it exclusively focused on students’ perspectives. Future studies may widen the sample by including all other actors taking part in the teaching–learning process. Researchers may go deeper by investigating teachers’ views and experience to have a complete view of the situation and how different elements interact between them or affect the others. Future studies may also identify some teacher-related factors that could influence students’ online learning experience. In the case of students, their age, sex, and degree programs may be examined in relation to the specific challenges and strategies they experience. Although the study involved a relatively large sample size, the participants were limited to college students from a Philippine university. To increase the robustness of the findings, future studies may expand the learning context to K-12 and several higher education institutions from different geographical regions. As a final note, this pandemic has undoubtedly reshaped and pushed the education system to its limits. However, this unprecedented event is the same thing that will make the education system stronger and survive future threats.

Authors’ contributions

Jessie Barrot led the planning, prepared the instrument, wrote the report, and processed and analyzed data. Ian Llenares participated in the planning, fielded the instrument, processed and analyzed data, reviewed the instrument, and contributed to report writing. Leo del Rosario participated in the planning, fielded the instrument, processed and analyzed data, reviewed the instrument, and contributed to report writing.

No funding was received in the conduct of this study.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The study has undergone appropriate ethics protocol.

Informed consent was sought from the participants.

Authors consented the publication. Participants consented to publication as long as confidentiality is observed.

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Charity Clark announces ‘winner’ of Fourth Annual Earth Day Essay Challenge

Vermont Business Magazine In celebration of Earth Day, Attorney General Charity Clark today announced the conclusion of the fourth annual Earth Day Essay Challenge for Vermont’s fifth and sixth graders. The annual event began in 2021 with the Attorney General’s Office inviting students to submit essays on the environment and Earth Day. This year’s essay challenge began in February and ran through mid-April. The Attorney General’s Office received 21 essays from students in different parts of Vermont, from Townshend in the southern part of the state, all the way to Charleston in the Northeast Kingdom.

“Each spring I look forward to reading student essays for Earth Day,” said Attorney General Charity Clark. “I am inspired by young Vermonters’ passion for the environment, commitment to protecting our shared resources, and joy in spending time with family and friends in the mountains, woods, and waterways of our beautiful state.”

The essays submitted to the Attorney General’s Office as a part of the Earth Day Essay Challenge are posted on the Office’s website for the public to enjoy. To read the students’ essays, please visit: https://ago.vermont.gov/attorney-generals-office-divisions-and-unit/environmental-protection/earth-day-essay-challenge/2024-attorney-generals-earth-day-essay-challenge-student-essays . The Attorney General as well as members of her office’s Environmental Protection Unit are providing individual feedback to each student who submitted an essay.

The following schools participated in this year’s essay challenge:

Charleston Elementary, 5th Grade

Leland and Gray Middle and High School, 6th Grade

Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative, 6th Grade

The “winner” of this year’s challenge – decided by pulling a name out of a hat – is Bella from Leland and Gray Middle and High School. Attorney General Clark and members of the Environmental Protection Unit are looking forward to visiting Leland and Gray later this spring.

For more information on the Attorney General’s Office’s environmental work and to keep up to date on the latest activities of the Office, please visit the Office’s website: https://ago.vermont.gov/ . 

Source: 4.22.2024. MONTPELIER, Vt. – Attorney General