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

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