Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on mental health in UK students

The article discusses the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on UK students' mental health and lifestyle. It highlights the negative impact of isolation, increased use of smartphones, and unhealthy eating habits. It also suggests ways to cope with the situation and encourages students to utilize their time in learning new skills. The article also mentions the positive impact of lockdown on family bonding. The strengths and weaknesses of the article are also discussed.

Assignment 2: Planning sheet
Title and author of article/book chapter/report
Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on mental health in a UK student.
Reason for choosing this item
The main reason behind selecting the article is to study and understand the impact of
lockdown during pandemic on children's lifestyle, mental health. Sudden changes in
student's lifestyle bring changes in their daily routine activities, restrictions over everything
like visiting outside the homes, on eating preferences, on going school, colleges or
universities,etc. impacted their lifestyle at a great extent. Academies adopted for online
classes forced them to be active on mobile phones or laptops for hours. And most of the
students have observed to not take interest in online classes. Students started spending
much more time on smartphones and televisions when sitting ideal. These all thing highly
contribute in development of stress, anxiety, depression in students. The article will focus
on negative and positive aspects of lockdown on people and encourage them to be
motivated towards positive approach and guide them to utilise time in a appropriate
manner (Chandola and et. al., 2020).
A brief overview of the content of the item
During coronavirus 2019 pandemic, various restrictions has been imposed by the local and
central governmental bodies on social and personal context. People were limited to their
homes or rooms only. Restrictions on social interaction and changes in lifestyle pattern has
highly impacted the mental health of people, especially students. Students has banned from
going to their institutions and their routine life got change completely. Many students who
used to live far from their home towns were returned to their homes and get a chance to get
close to their family members, which is a positive feedback. This pandemic lockdown has
impacted life of students in either way. Some has positive experience related to the
lockdown days while some has worst of it. Those students who remain protected and does
not suffered from the disease as well got a chance to get close to their families after a long
time. People were able to spend more time with their families and that time bring them
even more close but those students who were not able to reach to their homes and got stuck
in other cities or countries has faced the pandemic as worst experience. The isolation
experienced by those students as well as those who got infected had a major impact of
lockdown on their physical and mental health (Chen and Lucock., 2022).
The main arguments of the author(s)
The author mainly arguments on the impact of increased utilisation of smart phones and
impact of isolation on mental and physical health of students. Being isolated can have a
deeply negative impact on body, mind and especially mood. Many researchers have
explained in their articles that people who live isolated for a prolonged period of time have
more chances of developing mental problems like depression, anxiety and even
schizophrenia. Isolation may also provoke the student towards substance abuse and
development of chronic conditions like blood pressure problems or heart problems. In a
survey conducted in June, 2020, it was reported that during pandemic more students has
adopted for substance abuse as well rate of suicide thoughts among students got increased
up to 11%. And in context of smart phones the conditions were inappropriate as students
spent their most of the time on smartphones while taking online academic classes or not.
Over usage of smart phones can impact mental health and may develop anxiety and

depression among adults. Many other major problems associated with over use of mobile
phones that it impact memory, learning skills, thought process and reduce cognitive skills.
It make people lazy and spending more time on social media is more likely to display
negative personality characters among individuals. It influence the young generation to opt
for things that does not make any sense and just wasting their time. Adult generation starts
fall for useless trends and easily get attracted towards advertisements and encourage
rubbish market to grow which effect their quality of life. In lockdown, students were used
to be ideal at most of the times which indulged them in unhealthy eating habits and it leads
to increase the cases of obesity among young people (Cox and Brewster., 2020).
The main strengths and weaknesses of the article
Strengths
• This article spread awareness amongst students regarding the appropriate and
inappropriate practices followed by people during pandemic days. And informed
the students about the conclusion of opting inappropriate lifestyle .
• Article guides people about management of lifestyle during pandemic period. It
encourage students to utilise the time in the best possible way and try to develop
extra skills in learning academic topics or extra curricular activities that motivate
them to do physical activity instead of opting boredom and sitting ideal and get lazy
(Evans and et. al., 2021).
• The article has encouraged the students for being motivated and opt for appropriate
practices that help them in development. It has mentioned the positive impact on
families as they get extra time to know each other and better and spend some
quality time in this busy schedule life. It develop a positive mind-set to the people.
Weaknesses
• Information provided in the article does not cover many more issues regarding the
pandemic days.
• The article does not cover information regarding the efforts applied by
governmental bodies and front line warriors, how they manage the situations, how
they work day and night selflessly to serve people.
• The article does not contain overall sufficient information (Savage and et, al.,
2020).
How knowledge could be applied in the future as an HSC student / practitioner
Health and social care students analysed the situation faced by the people who suffered
from the infection, impact of isolation period on their physical and mental health. They can
make a report on the knowledge gained by them by this article and how would they
manage the situation if they were get the chance to act as a front line worker. What will
they do, if they have attended the infectious patient, what would be their primary action.
How would they help young people to cope up the struggles faced during isolation, how
would they motivate them to stay positive. And can discuss and apply the best knowledge
to their future practices to make things better and adopt for positive approaches (White and
Van Der Boor., 2020).

References (Apply Harvard referencing guide in full)
Chandola, T., Kumari, M., Booker, C.L. and Benzeval, M., 2020. The mental health impact
of COVID-19 and lockdown-related stressors among adults in the UK. Psychological
medicine, pp.1-10.
Chen, T. and Lucock, M., 2022. The mental health of university students during the COVID-
19 pandemic: An online survey in the UK. PLoS One, 17(1), p.e0262562.
Cox, A. and Brewster, L., 2020. Library support for student mental health and well-being in
the UK: Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Journal of Academic
Librarianship, 46(6), p.102256.
Evans, S., Alkan, E., Bhangoo, J.K., Tenenbaum, H. and Ng-Knight, T., 2021. Effects of the
COVID-19 lockdown on mental health, wellbeing, sleep, and alcohol use in a UK
student sample. Psychiatry research, 298, p.113819.
Savage, M.J., James, R., Magistro, D., Donaldson, J., Healy, L.C., Nevill, M. and Hennis,
P.J., 2020. Mental health and movement behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic in
UK university students: Prospective cohort study. Mental Health and Physical
Activity, 19, p.100357.
White, R.G. and Van Der Boor, C., 2020. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and initial
period of lockdown on the mental health and well-being of adults in the UK. BJPsych
open, 6(5).