Post covid situations have been challenging for everyone, including the school children. Children are anti-social, sitting by themselves or in small groups, cursing and pushing out each other. Many schools have started indulging students with counseling in coping up with mental stress. A few counselors even reported that many students are going through suicidal thoughts. Practicing meditation and taking time to acknowledge the small and big things to be grateful for is one of the basic and finest techniques to help students deal with mental issues during the pandemic.
Josh Gibson MD studied the effect of covid on school children and found that the children between 5-12 years of age show signs of anxiety, stress, and overall disturbed mental and emotional health.
Schools, government agencies, and community programs hire psychologists and social workers that help students deal with anxiety and depression.
Why are students feeling a mental load?
- Coronavirus mutant: With the increasing spread of delta variants, children are more anxious and unsettled and often occupied by questions like “What will happen?” or “Will this ever end?”.Children who have had the slightest of their time are more anxious as they didn’t get any chance to live a life without covid for a long period.
- Gap load: The time lost during the pandemic has created many gaps in the learning process. Students have been at home for the longest time,and it is not possible to learn everything within the boundaries of their house. This has assembleda lot of gap load for students. The need and load to learn everything as quickly as possible post covid has immensely increased anxiety and depression among students says Josh Gibson MD.
- Limited psychologist: It is unusualfor schools to appoint an individual psychologist for every student. On average, there is only one psychologist available for 1200 students. Therefore, the needs of every student cannot be taken into consideration individually. They can only be treated as a mass. This is leading to reduced improvements in the recovery rate comparatively.
- Negative thoughts: Almost every child is going through a lot of negativity post covid. The need to stand out among the crowd, sabotaging thoughts, and lack of energy from the long time spent at home without a proper schedule are all interlinked. Post covid schooling demands every student be focused and attentive as before covid times. This has resulted in imparting burdens for school students.
Final Words
Acknowledging the situation of school children post covid, organizations have started to change their ways of work. Hiring psychologists, connecting to children, and giving mental health of the student’s priority are helping children to cope with the mental issues they are facing post covid. It has been found the children between 5-12 age group are the most affected.
Setting up clubs in some schools to communicate with the students helping them to open easily is another smart way to help students tackle post covid side effects.