how did covid 19 affect your life essay

How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

Table of Contents

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges that our world has ever faced. People around the globe were affected in some way by this terrible disease, whether personally or not. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt isolated and in a state of panic. They often found themselves lacking a sense of community, confidence, and trust. The health systems in many countries were able to successfully prevent and treat people with COVID-19-related diseases while providing early intervention services to those who may not be fully aware that they are infected (Rume & Islam, 2020). Personally, this pandemic has brought numerous changes and challenges to my life. The COVID-19 pandemic affected my social, academic, and economic lifestyle positively and negatively.

Social and Academic Changes

One of the changes brought by the pandemic was economic changes that occurred very drastically (Haleem, Javaid, & Vaishya, 2020). During the pandemic, food prices started to rise, affecting the amount of money my parents could spend on goods and services. We had to reduce the food we bought as our budgets were stretched. My family also had to eliminate unhealthy food bought in bulk, such as crisps and chocolate bars. Furthermore, the pandemic made us more aware of the importance of keeping our homes clean, especially regarding cooking food. Lastly, it also made us more aware of how we talked to other people when they were ill and stayed home with them rather than being out and getting on with other things.

Furthermore, COVID-19 had a significant effect on my academic life. Immediately, measures to curb the pandemic were announced, such as closing all learning institutions in the country; my school life changed. The change began when our school implemented the online education system to ensure that we continued with our education during the lockdown period. At first, this affected me negatively because when learning was not happening in a formal environment, I struggled academically since I was not getting the face-to-face interaction with the teachers I needed. Furthermore, forcing us to attend online caused my classmates and me to feel disconnected from the knowledge being taught because we were unable to have peer participation in class. However, as the pandemic subsided, we grew accustomed to this learning mode. We realized the effects on our performance and learning satisfaction were positive, as it seemed to promote emotional and behavioral changes necessary to function in a virtual world. Students who participated in e-learning during the pandemic developed more ownership of the course requirement, increased their emotional intelligence and self-awareness, improved their communication skills, and learned to work together as a community.

If there is an area that the pandemic affected was the mental health of my family and myself. The COVID-19 pandemic caused increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns that were difficult for my family and me to manage alone. Our ability to learn social resilience skills, such as self-management, was tested numerous times. One of the most visible challenges we faced was social isolation and loneliness. The multiple lockdowns made it difficult to interact with my friends and family, leading to loneliness. The changes in communication exacerbated the problem as interactions moved from face-to-face to online communication using social media and text messages. Furthermore, having family members and loved ones separated from us due to distance, unavailability of phones, and the internet created a situation of fear among us, as we did not know whether they were all right. Moreover, some people within my circle found it more challenging to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers due to poor communication skills. This was mainly attributed to anxiety or a higher risk of spreading the disease. It was also related to a poor understanding of creating and maintaining relationships during this period.

Positive Changes

In addition, this pandemic has brought some positive changes with it. First, it had been a significant catalyst for strengthening relationships and neighborhood ties. It has encouraged a sense of community because family members, neighbors, friends, and community members within my area were all working together to help each other out. Before the pandemic, everybody focused on their business, the children going to school while the older people went to work. There was not enough time to bond with each other. Well, the pandemic changed that, something that has continued until now that everything is returning to normal. In our home, it strengthened the relationship between myself and my siblings and parents. This is because we started spending more time together as a family, which enhanced our sense of understanding of ourselves.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for many people. I can confidently state that it was a significant and potentially unprecedented change in our daily life. By changing how we do things and relate with our family and friends, the pandemic has shaped our future life experiences and shown that during crises, we can come together and make a difference in each other’s lives. Therefore, I embrace wholesomely the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in my life.

• Haleem, A., Javaid, M., & Vaishya, R. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life.  Current medicine research and practice ,  10 (2), 78.
• Rume, T., & Islam, S. D. U. (2020). Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability.  Heliyon ,  6 (9), e04965.
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How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

How are you staying connected and sane in a time of social distancing?

By Jeremy Engle

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Note: The Times Opinion section is working on an article about how the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted the lives of high school students. To share your story, fill out this form .

The coronavirus has changed how we work , play and learn : Schools are closing, sports leagues have been canceled, and many people have been asked to work from home.

On March 16, the Trump administration released new guidelines to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including closing schools and avoiding groups of more than 10 people, discretionary travel, bars, restaurants and food courts.

How are you dealing with these sudden and dramatic changes to how we live? Are you practicing social distancing — and are you even sure what that really means?

In “ Wondering About Social Distancing? ” Apoorva Mandavilli explains the term and offers practical guidance from experts:

What is social distancing? Put simply, the idea is to maintain a distance between you and other people — in this case, at least six feet. That also means minimizing contact with people. Avoid public transportation whenever possible, limit nonessential travel, work from home and skip social gatherings — and definitely do not go to crowded bars and sporting arenas. “Every single reduction in the number of contacts you have per day with relatives, with friends, co-workers, in school will have a significant impact on the ability of the virus to spread in the population,” said Dr. Gerardo Chowell, chair of population health sciences at Georgia State University. This strategy saved thousands of lives both during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and, more recently, in Mexico City during the 2009 flu pandemic.

The article continues with expert responses to some common questions about social distancing. Here are excerpts from three:

I’m young and don’t have any risk factors. Can I continue to socialize? Please don’t. There is no question that older people and those with underlying health conditions are most vulnerable to the virus, but young people are by no means immune. And there is a greater public health imperative. Even people who show only mild symptoms may pass the virus to many, many others — particularly in the early course of the infection, before they even realize they are sick. So you might keep the chain of infection going right to your own older or high-risk relatives. You may also contribute to the number of people infected, causing the pandemic to grow rapidly and overwhelm the health care system. If you ignore the guidance on social distancing, you will essentially put yourself and everyone else at much higher risk. Experts acknowledged that social distancing is tough, especially for young people who are used to gathering in groups. But even cutting down the number of gatherings, and the number of people in any group, will help. Can I leave my house? Absolutely. The experts were unanimous in their answer to this question. It’s O.K. to go outdoors for fresh air and exercise — to walk your dog, go for a hike or ride your bicycle, for example. The point is not to remain indoors, but to avoid being in close contact with people. You may also need to leave the house for medicines or other essential resources. But there are things you can do to keep yourself and others safe during and after these excursions. When you do leave your home, wipe down any surfaces you come into contact with, disinfect your hands with an alcohol-based sanitizer and avoid touching your face. Above all, frequently wash your hands — especially whenever you come in from outside, before you eat or before you’re in contact with the very old or very young. How long will we need to practice social distancing? That is a big unknown, experts said. A lot will depend on how well the social distancing measures in place work and how much we can slow the pandemic down. But prepare to hunker down for at least a month, and possibly much longer. In Seattle, the recommendations on social distancing have continued to escalate with the number of infections and deaths, and as the health system has become increasingly strained. “For now, it’s probably indefinite,” Dr. Marrazzo said. “We’re in uncharted territory.”

Abdullah Shihipar writes in an Opinion essay, “ Coronavirus and the Isolation Paradox ,” that while social distancing is required to prevent infection, loneliness can make us sick:

A paradox of this moment is that while social distancing is required to contain the spread of the coronavirus, it may also contribute to poor health in the long run. So while physical isolation will be required for many Americans who have Covid-19 or have been exposed to it, it’s important that we don’t let such measures cause social and emotional isolation, too. The Health Resources and Services Administration cautions that loneliness can be as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Feelings of isolation and loneliness can increase the likelihood of depression, high blood pressure, and death from heart disease. They can also affect the immune system’s ability to fight infection — a fact that’s especially relevant during a pandemic. Studies have shown that loneliness can activate our fight-or-flight function, causing chronic inflammation and reducing the body’s ability to defend itself from viruses.

The essay continues:

For solutions, we can look to countries where people have been dealing with coronavirus for some time. As the BBC reported, people in China are turning to creative means to stay connected. Some are streaming concerts and gym classes. Others are organizing virtual book-club meetings. In Wuhan, people gathered at their windows to shout “Wuhan, jiayou!” which translates to “Keep fighting, Wuhan!” A business owner packed 200 meals for medical workers, while a villager in a neighboring province donated 15,000 masks to those in need. For those of us who know people, especially elderly people, who may be isolated, get connected. Check in daily and look for ways to spend time together, either through a FaceTime or WhatsApp call, through collaborative gaming or just by using the telephone.

It concludes:

It may provide some comfort to know that thousands of other people are going through the same thing, and as in China, collective coping strategies will emerge. TikTok videos, memes, stories, essays and poems about living in isolation will all become part of the culture. We could come out of this feeling more connected to each other than before.

Students, read ONE of the articles in its entirety, then tell us:

How is the coronavirus affecting your life — physically, socially and emotionally? What changes have you, your friends, family and community experienced? What has been the most difficult aspect for you?

How is the coronavirus outbreak disrupting your middle or high school experience? Has your school been closed? If so, what does your education look and feel like now? If not, are you worried about your school closing? Does your school have a plan in place if it does?

Are you and your family practicing any forms of social distancing? If yes, which ones and why? Will you practice more social distancing now that you have read this article?

How are you staying connected and sane in a time of social distancing? How have you been staying in touch with your social groups? What new routines have you developed?

What helps you deal with all the changes brought about by the coronavirus outbreak? How do you cope with feelings of isolation and loneliness? Do any of the coping strategies suggested by Mr. Shihipar resonate with you? What strategies would you recommend to others?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

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Regions & Countries

In Their Own Words, Americans Describe the Struggles and Silver Linings of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak has dramatically changed americans’ lives and relationships over the past year. we asked people to tell us about their experiences – good and bad – in living through this moment in history..

Pew Research Center has been asking survey questions over the past year about Americans’ views and reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August, we gave the public a chance to tell us in their own words how the pandemic has affected them in their personal lives. We wanted to let them tell us how their lives have become more difficult or challenging, and we also asked about any unexpectedly positive events that might have happened during that time.

The vast majority of Americans (89%) mentioned at least one negative change in their own lives, while a smaller share (though still a 73% majority) mentioned at least one unexpected upside. Most have experienced these negative impacts and silver linings simultaneously: Two-thirds (67%) of Americans mentioned at least one negative and at least one positive change since the pandemic began.

For this analysis, we surveyed 9,220 U.S. adults between Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology . 

Respondents to the survey were asked to describe in their own words how their lives have been difficult or challenging since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, and to describe any positive aspects of the situation they have personally experienced as well. Overall, 84% of respondents provided an answer to one or both of the questions. The Center then categorized a random sample of 4,071 of their answers using a combination of in-house human coders, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service and keyword-based pattern matching. The full methodology  and questions used in this analysis can be found here.

In many ways, the negatives clearly outweigh the positives – an unsurprising reaction to a pandemic that had killed  more than 180,000 Americans  at the time the survey was conducted. Across every major aspect of life mentioned in these responses, a larger share mentioned a negative impact than mentioned an unexpected upside. Americans also described the negative aspects of the pandemic in greater detail: On average, negative responses were longer than positive ones (27 vs. 19 words). But for all the difficulties and challenges of the pandemic, a majority of Americans were able to think of at least one silver lining. 

Both the negative and positive impacts described in these responses cover many aspects of life, none of which were mentioned by a majority of Americans. Instead, the responses reveal a pandemic that has affected Americans’ lives in a variety of ways, of which there is no “typical” experience. Indeed, not all groups seem to have experienced the pandemic equally. For instance, younger and more educated Americans were more likely to mention silver linings, while women were more likely than men to mention challenges or difficulties.

Here are some direct quotes that reveal how Americans are processing the new reality that has upended life across the country.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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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4 Ways That the Pandemic Changed How We See Ourselves

A fter more than two years of pandemic life , it seems like we’ve changed as people. But how? In the beginning, many wished for a return to normal, only to realize that this might never be possible—and that could be a good thing. Although we experienced the same global crisis, it has impacted people in extremely different ways and encouraged us to think more deeply about who we are and what we’re looking for.

Isolation tested our sense of identity because it limited our access to in-person social feedback. For decades, scientists have explored how “the self is a social product.” We interpret the world through social observation. In 1902, Charles Cooley invented the concept “the looking glass self.” It explains how we develop our identity based on how we believe other people see us, but also try to influence their perceptions , so they see us in the way we’d like to be seen. If we understand who we are based on social feedback, what happened to our sense of self under isolation?

Here are four ways that the pandemic changed how we see ourselves.

When lockdown started, our identities felt less stable, but we adjusted back over time

In crisis, our self-concept was challenged. A December 2020 study by Guido Alessandri and colleagues, which was published in Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research , measured how Italians reacted to the first week of the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 by evaluating how their self-concept clarity—the extent to which they have a consistent sense of self—affected their negative emotional response to the sudden lockdown.

Self-concept clarity represents “how much you have [clearly defined who you are] in your mind … not in this moment but in general,” explains Alessandri, a psychology professor at the Sapienza University of Rome. While generally people have high self-concept clarity, those with depression or personality disorders usually experience lower levels. “The lockdown threatened people’s self-concept. The very surprising result was that people with higher self-concept clarity [were] more reactive” and experienced a greater increase in negative affect than those with lower self-concept clarity.

In Alessandri’s study, people eventually returned to their initial stages of self-concept clarity, but it took longer than expected due to the shock and distress of the pandemic. This reflects a concept called emotional inertia , where emotional states are “resistant to change” and take some time to return to a baseline level. At the beginning of the pandemic, we questioned what we believed to be true about ourselves, but since then, we’ve adjusted to this new world.

Many people were forced to adopt new social roles, but the discomfort they felt depends on how important that role is to them

Our identities are not fixed; we hold several different social roles within our family, workplace, and friend groups, which naturally change over time. But in isolation, many of our social roles had to involuntarily change , from “parents homeschooling children [to] friends socializing online and employees working from home.”

As we adapted to a new way of life, a study published in September 2021 in PLOS One found that people who experienced involuntary social role disruptions because of COVID-19 reported increased feelings of inauthenticity—which could mean feeling disconnected from their true self because of their current situation. It was challenging for people to suddenly change their routines and feel like themselves in the midst of a crisis.

But the study also uncovered that “this social role interruption affects people’s sense of authenticity only to the extent that the role is important to you,” says co-author Jingshi (Joyce) Liu, a lecturer in marketing at the City campus of the University of London. If being a musician is central to your identity, for example, it’s more likely that you would feel inauthentic playing virtual shows on Zoom, but if your job isn’t a big part of who you are, you may not be as affected.

To feel more comfortable in their new identity, people can start accepting their new sense of self without trying to go back to who they once were

Over the last two years, our mindset and control over the roles we occupy in many facets of life helped determine how virtual learning and remote work affected us. “We are very sensitive to our environment,” Liu says. “[The] disruption of who we are will nonetheless feed into how we feel about our own authenticity.” But we can do our best to accept these changes and even form a new sense of self. “[If] I incorporated virtual teaching as a part of my self-identity, I [may not] need to change my behavior to go back to classroom teaching for me to feel authentic. I simply just adapt or expand the definition of what it means to be a teacher,” she adds. Similarly, if you’re a therapist, you can expand your understanding of what consulting with patients looks like to include video and phone calls.

During the pandemic, many people have made voluntary role changes, like choosing to become parents, move to a new city or country, or accept a new job. Previous research by Ibarra and Barbulescu (2010) shows that although these voluntary role changes may temporarily cause a sense of inauthenticity, they eventually tend to result in a feeling of authenticity because people are taking steps to be true to themselves or start a new chapter. “The authenticity will be restored as people adapt to their new identity,” Liu says.

Our identities have changed, so it’s important to be authentic with how we present ourselves online and offline

We have more power than we may realize to navigate a crisis by accepting that it’s OK to change. But it’s important to act in a way that’s true to ourselves. “People have a perception of the true self … They have some idea of who they truly are,” Liu says. “When you lend that to the [looking glass self], I think people would feel most inauthentic when they are performing to others in a way that is inconsistent with how they are [thinking and feeling internally],” which can happen on social media.

In isolation , when we didn’t have access to the same level of social feedback as normal, social media in some cases became a lifeline and a substitute for our self-presentation. The pandemic inspired people to take space away from the Internet and others to become increasingly dependent on it for their social wellbeing. “[Our unpublished data shows] that time spent on social media increased people’s sense of inauthenticity, perhaps because social media entails a lot of impression management [and] people are heavily editing themselves on these platforms,” Liu says.

With all that we’ve experienced, many of us have fundamentally changed as people. “In the same way which the first lockdown required us to [self-regulate] and adhere to new social norms, these changes that we’re experiencing now require another self-regulation effort to understand what is happening,” Alessandri says. “We don’t expect that people will simply get back to their previous [lives]—I don’t think this is possible. I think we have to negotiate a new kind of reality.”

The more we accept that we are no longer the same people after this crisis, the easier it will be for us to reconcile who we are now and who we want to become.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

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The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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How covid-19 changed lives - voices of children.

UNICEF Georgia asked children and young people around the country how they are coping with the new normal, and how their lives have been affected.

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Being a school student can sometimes be challenging, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made getting an education, and life in general, even more difficult for young people in Georgia.

With schools closed, lessons are being held remotely. All sports, school activities, and events have been cancelled. Friendships and relationships have been transported to live chats and video calls.

Mate Dvalishvili, 15 years old, Kutaisi

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed my life. When I used to go to school, by the end of the day I would be exhausted – mentally as well as physically – and as a result, I did not have trouble falling asleep. Now, I don’t get tired enough during the day, so I can’t sleep at night, and I wake up late in the morning. That’s why I am sometimes late for, or even miss, video classes.

Before, I used to wake up at 8 a.m., and by 9 a.m. I was already at school. After classes I went to a tutor, then to play sports. When I came home, I did homework and hung out with my friends, if we had free time. I went to bed sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight. Now, I get up at noon, or even as late as 1 or 2 p.m. When the weather is good, I may go out to ride my bicycle with my family members, but the rest of the time I’m at home playing online games and watching films. I go to bed at 1 or 2 a.m., and at times, I am video-chatting with my friends until 3 or 4 a.m., sometimes until morning.

The teachers are trying to teach our classes like they did in school, but still, I can’t say that online classes are as interesting as they were in person. At least now, I have a bit less homework to do. I was more active during classes while in school, there was more interaction. The programmes that we use for online classes cannot replace school. In order to make online learning effective, they should develop a special online programme that could be adapted to school teaching. At the same time, teachers should be familiar with using the programme.

For me, the hardest thing in the new reality is the new reality itself: doing nothing (for almost 2 months), and the immense lack of communication with my friends in real life. It is not unbearable, but it is very difficult.

Keta Tkhilaishvili, 10 years old, Batumi

My life has changed completely since my school was closed. Before, I spent most of the day at school with my classmates. Now, this is my free time.

When I went to school, my schedule was really full. I got up early, prepared for school, and I also had extra classes like German, chess, circle dancing, and so on.

Now my schedule is organized according to the self-isolation rules. I wake up at 10 a.m., I have breakfast, and then I have my online classes. I spend my free time as I wish, then I prepare my lessons. Sometimes I watch classes on TV. I am at home all the time. Since I have plenty of time now, I try to balance out working and free time on my own.

Interaction with my classmates in school is what I miss the most from before. When I went to school, I had more homework, but the lessons were way more engaging and interesting, I could concentrate better. Online schooling is something very new. At times, I struggle with online group studying because I don’t understand what the teacher is saying because of the Internet connection and other technical problems. But it’s interesting too. I learned how to do homework electronically and search for information on the Internet. Before, I thought that the Internet was only for playing and entertainment.

I want to go back to school soon, and before that happens, I want to be able to communicate on the Internet without interruptions.

Sandro Turabelidze, 11 years old, Village Jimastaro, Imereti

During the pandemic I had to switch to distance or online school. I don’t find learning online difficult, it is easy. Before the class is over, teachers give us an assignment, we do the homework, take a photo of the exercise book, and send it to the teacher. During the next lesson the teacher tests our knowledge. When I have free time, I play with my sister at home. I no longer visit my neighbors. I play by myself in the yard, I try to stay isolated. To spend time with my friends, I call them, we talk to each other, and play online. I go out to the yard for 5-10 minutes only, to play something by myself, like ride the bicycle, or play ball by myself, and then I go back inside as I try to avoid contact with neighbors.

Elene Iashvili, 11 years old, Kvitiri

I live in the village of Kvitiri and I go to the Kutaisi Chess school. I had great plans this year. I was so excited to participate in the Georgia, Poti, Racha, and Tkibuli chess tournaments. Traveling around the country during tournaments is so much fun. We would go to the sea to relax after the game in Poti, and we would cozy up and enjoy the fresh air in the evening in Racha. In Tkibuli, we got to go to the swimming pool. Now, I play online chess games with a computer. Online chess tournaments are held for adults only. They are very rarely held for children my age. I also play with my grandfather, but it is very difficult for a child chess player to develop during quarantine.

I was very sad at the beginning, but my friends and I found a solution together. We created a chat and communicate via that chat very often. We named the chat “girls” but later we added boys to the group as well. These relationships are very helpful.

We became tied to our computers after the schools closed. Online classes can’t replace in-school classes. At school they explain the content in more detail. And also, many of my classmates can’t attend online classes. They may have the Internet, but don’t have a personal telephone or laptop. It would be unfair if they have problems because of this.

During self-isolation, I got interested in taking photos. I go out to the yard, take photos of the flowers. Now the strawberries have ripened. I try to take joyful photos to cheer up people who are locked inside. Having a relationship with nature is one way to keep spirits up.

Luka Turabelidze, 10 years old

I am in the fourth grade and have been studying online for 2 months now. Online learning is not hard at all.

I spend my free time riding my bicycle, and playing with my ball. I am lucky to have a yard, we don’t have to stay inside the house all the time. But, we don’t visit others and no one comes to visit us. That is why I am a bit bored. Also, I miss my classmates. I do talk to them on the phone, but meeting them and playing is a totally different thing. My mother and father are saying that the pandemic will go away soon and we will be able to live our lives like before. I hope that we will be able to go to the river and have a good time this summer.

Nana Samkharadze, mother of Tekla and Lile Machavariani

Tekla and Lile are having a good a time as possible during the pandemic. We try to keep up with their education – they are 4 and 5 years old – and we are teaching their age-specific skills as much as we can. We learn letters, numbers, addition and subtraction, and most of the time we play. We come up with different things. The girls have even made a small flower alley. The entire house is filled with their toys. So, we are having fun together and trying to make sure that the children do not feel the pandemic and its effects. It’s good that they have each other, they would probably be much more bored if they were alone.

Giorgi Kapchelashvili, 17 years old, Kutaisi

The recent changes have affected me very deeply. Staying at home for such a long time is bad for one’s health. Most of the time I am on the computer. I miss real life communication with others a lot.

Before, I woke up at 8 a.m., now I wake up in the afternoon. I play on my phone while still in bed. Next, I have “breakfast” and again – telephone. The exception is the three days a week when online classes start at 10 a.m., and I have to wake up early.

I think one can receive a good education through distance learning, if willing. But real school was more interesting, because discussions with friends helped me to better understand the content. I love mathematics very much, and I miss going to the math teacher.

Although, I have found one upside – I’m in a band, I play an electric guitar. During this quarantine I have improved my playing technique considerably. I have also improved my English language skills. My sister is an English teacher and has helped me with my English.

Amiko Turabelidze, 12 years old

I love TV school programmes, and I watch them often. I personally like distance learning very much, because I have more free time. Now, I can spend more time riding my bike, drawing, and listening to music. I also help my grandfather in the vineyard. I communicate with friends on the Internet, but we cannot see one another and talk. I hope everything will be alright and we will see each other soon.

Nika Khelaia, 13 years old

Initially, I was afraid that online classes would be difficult, but it doesn’t seem as hard as I expected. In a way, it’s even easy. Currently, anatomy is the most interesting subject for me, because I am going to become a doctor, specifically, a surgeon. I usually take part in a lot of competitions, and I hope to be able to participate again starting in September.

I spend my free time with my brother, I ride my bicycle, and spend time outside. I have a younger brother – he’s 2 years old – and I try to keep him entertained. I give my parents a hand so that they have time for household chores.

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How did COVID-19 affect Americans’ well-being and mental health?

Subscribe to global connection, emily dobson , emily dobson ph.d. student - university of maryland carol graham , carol graham senior fellow - economic studies @cgbrookings tim hua , and tim hua student - middlebury college, former intern - global economy and development sergio pinto sergio pinto doctoral student, university of maryland.

April 8, 2022

COVID-19 has justifiably raised widespread public concern about mental health worldwide. In the U.S., the pandemic was an unprecedented shock to society at a time when the nation was already coping with a crisis of despair and related deaths from suicides, overdoses, and alcohol poisoning. Meanwhile, COVID-19’s impact was inequitable: Deaths were concentrated among the elderly and minorities working in essential jobs, groups who up to the pandemic had been reporting better mental health. We still do not fully understand how the shock has affected society’s well-being and mental health.

In a recent paper in which we compared trends in 2019-2020 using several nationally representative datasets, we found a variety of contrasting stories. While data from the 2019 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2020 Household Pulse Survey (HPS) containing the same mental health screening questions for depression and anxiety show that both increased significantly, especially among young and low-income Americans in 2020, we found no such changes when analyzing alternative depression questions that are also asked in a consistent manner in the 2019-2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the 2019-2020 NHIS. Despite the differences in trends, the basic determinants of mental health were similar in three data sets in the same two years.

Our findings raise questions about the robustness of the many studies claiming unprecedented increases in depression and anxiety among the young compared to older cohorts. Many of them, due to the urgency created by COVID-19 and a paucity of good, consistent data, matched datasets and used different questions therein in their attempt to identify changes in the trends between the two years. The inconsistency in the outcome changes over time across datasets points to the need for caution in drawing conclusions, as well as in relying too heavily on a single study; results generated from different data may differ considerably.

Given the paucity of comparable data and the usual one-year lag in the release of the final mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we also tried to get a handle on changes in patterns in mental health by examining emergency medical services (EMS) data calls related to behavior, overdoses, suicide attempts, and gun violence. The EMS data has the advantage of using the same methods and samples over the two-year period. We found an increase in gun violence and opioid overdose calls in 2020 after lockdowns, but surprisingly, a sharp decrease in behavioral health calls and no change in suicide-related EMS activations. The latter trend is a puzzle, but possible explanations include opioid overdose deaths increasing markedly and possibly substituting for suicide deaths. Alternatively, many older men—who are the demographic groups with the most suicide deaths—died of COVID-19 in that same period; another tragic “substitution” effect.

Finally, we looked at whether over the long run there is a relationship between poor mental health and later deaths of despair in micropolitan and metropolitan statistical areas (MMSAs). We found modest support for that possibility. Based on mental health reports in the BRFSS and CDC mortality data, we find that two-to-three-year-lagged bad mental health days (at the individual level) are associated with higher rates of deaths of despair (at the MMSA level), and that the two-to-four-year-lagged rates of deaths of despair are associated with a higher number of bad mental health days in later years. We cannot establish a direction of causality, but it is possible that there are vicious circles at play with individual trends in mental health contributing to broader community distress, and communities with more despair-related deaths likely to have more mental health problems later as a result.

Our analysis, based on many different datasets and indicators of despair, does not contradict other studies in that despair is an ongoing problem in the U.S., as reflected by both mental health reports and trends in EMS activations. However, we do find that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are mixed, and that while some trends, such as opioid overdose deaths, worsened in 2020 compared to 2019, others, such as in some mental health reports and in suicide rates, improved slightly. Our work does not speak to the longer-term mental health consequences of the pandemic, but it does suggest that there were deep pockets of both despair and resilience throughout it. It also suggests that caution is necessary in drawing policy implications from any one study.

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• COVID-19 and your mental health

Worries and anxiety about COVID-19 can be overwhelming. Learn ways to cope as COVID-19 spreads.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, life for many people changed very quickly. Worry and concern were natural partners of all that change — getting used to new routines, loneliness and financial pressure, among other issues. Information overload, rumor and misinformation didn't help.

Worldwide surveys done in 2020 and 2021 found higher than typical levels of stress, insomnia, anxiety and depression. By 2022, levels had lowered but were still higher than before 2020.

Though feelings of distress about COVID-19 may come and go, they are still an issue for many people. You aren't alone if you feel distress due to COVID-19. And you're not alone if you've coped with the stress in less than healthy ways, such as substance use.

But healthier self-care choices can help you cope with COVID-19 or any other challenge you may face.

And knowing when to get help can be the most essential self-care action of all.

Recognize what's typical and what's not

Stress and worry are common during a crisis. But something like the COVID-19 pandemic can push people beyond their ability to cope.

In surveys, the most common symptoms reported were trouble sleeping and feeling anxiety or nervous. The number of people noting those symptoms went up and down in surveys given over time. Depression and loneliness were less common than nervousness or sleep problems, but more consistent across surveys given over time. Among adults, use of drugs, alcohol and other intoxicating substances has increased over time as well.

The first step is to notice how often you feel helpless, sad, angry, irritable, hopeless, anxious or afraid. Some people may feel numb.

Keep track of how often you have trouble focusing on daily tasks or doing routine chores. Are there things that you used to enjoy doing that you stopped doing because of how you feel? Note any big changes in appetite, any substance use, body aches and pains, and problems with sleep.

These feelings may come and go over time. But if these feelings don't go away or make it hard to do your daily tasks, it's time to ask for help.

Get help when you need it

If you're feeling suicidal or thinking of hurting yourself, seek help.

• Contact your healthcare professional or a mental health professional.
• Contact a suicide hotline. In the U.S., call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline , available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Or use the Lifeline Chat . Services are free and confidential.

If you are worried about yourself or someone else, contact your healthcare professional or mental health professional. Some may be able to see you in person or talk over the phone or online.

You also can reach out to a friend or loved one. Someone in your faith community also could help.

And you may be able to get counseling or a mental health appointment through an employer's employee assistance program.

Another option is information and treatment options from groups such as:

• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
• Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Self-care tips

Some people may use unhealthy ways to cope with anxiety around COVID-19. These unhealthy choices may include things such as misuse of medicines or legal drugs and use of illegal drugs. Unhealthy coping choices also can be things such as sleeping too much or too little, or overeating. It also can include avoiding other people and focusing on only one soothing thing, such as work, television or gaming.

Unhealthy coping methods can worsen mental and physical health. And that is particularly true if you're trying to manage or recover from COVID-19.

Self-care actions can help you restore a healthy balance in your life. They can lessen everyday stress or significant anxiety linked to events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Self-care actions give your body and mind a chance to heal from the problems long-term stress can cause.

Take care of your body

Healthy self-care tips start with the basics. Give your body what it needs and avoid what it doesn't need. Some tips are:

• Get the right amount of sleep for you. A regular sleep schedule, when you go to bed and get up at similar times each day, can help avoid sleep problems.
• Move your body. Regular physical activity and exercise can help reduce anxiety and improve mood. Any activity you can do regularly is a good choice. That may be a scheduled workout, a walk or even dancing to your favorite music.
• Choose healthy food and drinks. Foods that are high in nutrients, such as protein, vitamins and minerals are healthy choices. Avoid food or drink with added sugar, fat or salt.
• Avoid tobacco, alcohol and drugs. If you smoke tobacco or if you vape, you're already at higher risk of lung disease. Because COVID-19 affects the lungs, your risk increases even more. Using alcohol to manage how you feel can make matters worse and reduce your coping skills. Avoid taking illegal drugs or misusing prescriptions to manage your feelings.

Take care of your mind

Healthy coping actions for your brain start with deciding how much news and social media is right for you. Staying informed, especially during a pandemic, helps you make the best choices but do it carefully.

Set aside a specific amount of time to find information in the news or on social media, stay limited to that time, and choose reliable sources. For example, give yourself up to 20 or 30 minutes a day of news and social media. That amount keeps people informed but not overwhelmed.

For COVID-19, consider reliable health sources. Examples are the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Other healthy self-care tips are:

• Relax and recharge. Many people benefit from relaxation exercises such as mindfulness, deep breathing, meditation and yoga. Find an activity that helps you relax and try to do it every day at least for a short time. Fitting time in for hobbies or activities you enjoy can help manage feelings of stress too.
• Stick to your health routine. If you see a healthcare professional for mental health services, keep up with your appointments. And stay up to date with all your wellness tests and screenings.
• Stay in touch and connect with others. Family, friends and your community are part of a healthy mental outlook. Together, you form a healthy support network for concerns or challenges. Social interactions, over time, are linked to a healthier and longer life.

Avoid stigma and discrimination

Stigma can make people feel isolated and even abandoned. They may feel sad, hurt and angry when people in their community avoid them for fear of getting COVID-19. People who have experienced stigma related to COVID-19 include people of Asian descent, health care workers and people with COVID-19.

Treating people differently because of their medical condition, called medical discrimination, isn't new to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stigma has long been a problem for people with various conditions such as Hansen's disease (leprosy), HIV, diabetes and many mental illnesses.

People who experience stigma may be left out or shunned, treated differently, or denied job and school options. They also may be targets of verbal, emotional and physical abuse.

Communication can help end stigma or discrimination. You can address stigma when you:

• Get to know people as more than just an illness. Using respectful language can go a long way toward making people comfortable talking about a health issue.
• Get the facts about COVID-19 or other medical issues from reputable sources such as the CDC and WHO.
• Speak up if you hear or see myths about an illness or people with an illness.

COVID-19 and health

The virus that causes COVID-19 is still a concern for many people. By recognizing when to get help and taking time for your health, life challenges such as COVID-19 can be managed.

• Mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. National Institutes of Health. https://covid19.nih.gov/covid-19-topics/mental-health. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• Mental Health and COVID-19: Early evidence of the pandemic's impact: Scientific brief, 2 March 2022. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-Sci_Brief-Mental_health-2022.1. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• Mental health and the pandemic: What U.S. surveys have found. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/02/mental-health-and-the-pandemic-what-u-s-surveys-have-found/. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• Taking care of your emotional health. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://emergency.cdc.gov/coping/selfcare.asp. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• #HealthyAtHome—Mental health. World Health Organization. www.who.int/campaigns/connecting-the-world-to-combat-coronavirus/healthyathome/healthyathome---mental-health. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• Coping with stress. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/stress-coping/cope-with-stress/. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• Manage stress. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://health.gov/myhealthfinder/topics/health-conditions/heart-health/manage-stress. Accessed March 20, 2020.
• COVID-19 and substance abuse. National Institute on Drug Abuse. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/covid-19-substance-use#health-outcomes. Accessed March 12, 2024.
• COVID-19 resource and information guide. National Alliance on Mental Illness. https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/NAMI-HelpLine/COVID-19-Information-and-Resources/COVID-19-Resource-and-Information-Guide. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Negative coping and PTSD. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. https://www.ptsd.va.gov/gethelp/negative_coping.asp. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Health effects of cigarette smoking. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/index.htm#respiratory. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• People with certain medical conditions. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Your healthiest self: Emotional wellness toolkit. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nih.gov/health-information/emotional-wellness-toolkit. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• World leprosy day: Bust the myths, learn the facts. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/world-leprosy-day/. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• HIV stigma and discrimination. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/hiv-stigma/. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Diabetes stigma: Learn about it, recognize it, reduce it. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/library/features/diabetes_stigma.html. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Phelan SM, et al. Patient and health care professional perspectives on stigma in integrated behavioral health: Barriers and recommendations. Annals of Family Medicine. 2023; doi:10.1370/afm.2924.
• Stigma reduction. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/od2a/case-studies/stigma-reduction.html. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Nyblade L, et al. Stigma in health facilities: Why it matters and how we can change it. BMC Medicine. 2019; doi:10.1186/s12916-019-1256-2.
• Combating bias and stigma related to COVID-19. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19-bias. Accessed March 15, 2024.
• Yashadhana A, et al. Pandemic-related racial discrimination and its health impact among non-Indigenous racially minoritized peoples in high-income contexts: A systematic review. Health Promotion International. 2021; doi:10.1093/heapro/daab144.
• Sawchuk CN (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. March 25, 2024.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

• The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
• The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
• The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
• Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

• Are my experiences different from others’?
• Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
• Am I aware of my privilege?
• Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
• Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

• Grading scales and policies
• Graduation requirements
• Instructional methods
• Schedules and course offerings
• Testing requirements
• Your academic calendar
• Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

• One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
• One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
• Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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How COVID-19 has impacted my life as a college student

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Like many students in this uncertain time, my life quickly changed with the spread of COVID-19. My school moved to virtual classes and most areas on campus closed. My on-campus job was suddenly not necessary anymore. My summer internship might even be affected. My friends and I all moved back home for the unforeseeable future, so we are all separated. With so much change going on in everyone’s lives, it is important to stay focused on the positive and try not to dwell on the negative . I am trying to make this a learning experience for myself, knowing that anything can happen and needing to be prepared for the unknown. 

Adjust to change

I am still adjusting to online courses, as this will be my first time taking an online course at Fresno State University. Although I am worried about how my learning will be impacted by taking virtual courses, I know that there are many resources online that I can utilize to make sure I understand the concepts. Many students are also worried they will have a harder time keeping track of their assignments. Keeping an updated schedule or setting reminders of when something is due will be key to success in a virtual classroom. I know in the end this will only make me a stronger student if I roll with the punches.

Focus on the positive 

The media tends to focus on the negative impact of COVID-19, however I think we need to try and look at all of the people who have recovered from it, too. As a college student, it is hard to focus on school at all with all of this going on. But I’ve realized that once I stopped scrolling through endless news updates, I was able to refocus on school and get more things done. It is important to know what is going on in regard to this situation, but we all have to keep our mental health in check . While it is important to keep up with current events, look for all the good happening in the world as well. Don’t just get sucked into a time warp where you are only doing homework or not doing anything at all; be sure to take time for you and the things you enjoy. 

These are uncertain times that seem to be constantly changing; it can be overwhelming. One thing I can do is remain positive and hope everything gets better soon. Students across the world have been thrown into a whirlwind, but by being flexible and focusing on the positive, we will make it through together.

About the author

Jesus Hernandez

Jesus Hernandez is a junior majoring in Business Management at California State University of Fresno. In his free time, he enjoys working out, being with family, and watching sports. Jesus has over 300 hours of volunteer work and has coordinated two networking events at Fresno State. He enjoys being a Pearson Campus Ambassador and working on new projects with them each month.

Do you have a compelling story or student success tips you’d like to see published on the Pearson Students blog?  If you are a college student and interested in writing for us – click here  to pitch your idea and get started!

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• Volume 76, Issue 2
• COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on social relationships and health
• Article Text
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• http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-4471 Emily Long 1 ,
• Susan Patterson 1 ,
• Karen Maxwell 1 ,
• Carolyn Blake 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7342-4566 Raquel Bosó Pérez 1 ,
• Ruth Lewis 1 ,
• Mark McCann 1 ,
• Julie Riddell 1 ,
• Kathryn Skivington 1 ,
• Rachel Wilson-Lowe 1 ,
• http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-6601 Kirstin R Mitchell 2
• 1 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
• 2 MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Institute of Health & Wellbeing , University of Glasgow , Glasgow , UK
• Correspondence to Dr Emily Long, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 7HR, UK; emily.long{at}glasgow.ac.uk

This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery. We first provide an overview of the pandemic in the UK context, outlining the nature of the public health response. We then introduce four distinct domains of social relationships: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy, highlighting the mechanisms through which the pandemic and associated public health response drastically altered social interactions in each domain. Throughout the essay, the lens of health inequalities, and perspective of relationships as interconnecting elements in a broader system, is used to explore the varying impact of these disruptions. The essay concludes by providing recommendations for longer term recovery ensuring that the social relational cost of COVID-19 is adequately considered in efforts to rebuild.

• inequalities

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated and/or analysed for this study. Data sharing not applicable as no data sets generated or analysed for this essay.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2021-216690

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Introduction

Infectious disease pandemics, including SARS and COVID-19, demand intrapersonal behaviour change and present highly complex challenges for public health. 1 A pandemic of an airborne infection, spread easily through social contact, assails human relationships by drastically altering the ways through which humans interact. In this essay, we draw on theories of social relationships to examine specific ways in which relational mechanisms key to health and well-being were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Relational mechanisms refer to the processes between people that lead to change in health outcomes.

At the time of writing, the future surrounding COVID-19 was uncertain. Vaccine programmes were being rolled out in countries that could afford them, but new and more contagious variants of the virus were also being discovered. The recovery journey looked long, with continued disruption to social relationships. The social cost of COVID-19 was only just beginning to emerge, but the mental health impact was already considerable, 2 3 and the inequality of the health burden stark. 4 Knowledge of the epidemiology of COVID-19 accrued rapidly, but evidence of the most effective policy responses remained uncertain.

The initial response to COVID-19 in the UK was reactive and aimed at reducing mortality, with little time to consider the social implications, including for interpersonal and community relationships. The terminology of ‘social distancing’ quickly became entrenched both in public and policy discourse. This equation of physical distance with social distance was regrettable, since only physical proximity causes viral transmission, whereas many forms of social proximity (eg, conversations while walking outdoors) are minimal risk, and are crucial to maintaining relationships supportive of health and well-being.

The aim of this essay is to explore four key relational mechanisms that were impacted by the pandemic and associated restrictions: social networks, social support, social interaction and intimacy. We use relational theories and emerging research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response to make three key recommendations: one regarding public health responses; and two regarding social recovery. Our understanding of these mechanisms stems from a ‘systems’ perspective which casts social relationships as interdependent elements within a connected whole. 5

Social networks

Social networks characterise the individuals and social connections that compose a system (such as a workplace, community or society). Social relationships range from spouses and partners, to coworkers, friends and acquaintances. They vary across many dimensions, including, for example, frequency of contact and emotional closeness. Social networks can be understood both in terms of the individuals and relationships that compose the network, as well as the overall network structure (eg, how many of your friends know each other).

Social networks show a tendency towards homophily, or a phenomenon of associating with individuals who are similar to self. 6 This is particularly true for ‘core’ network ties (eg, close friends), while more distant, sometimes called ‘weak’ ties tend to show more diversity. During the height of COVID-19 restrictions, face-to-face interactions were often reduced to core network members, such as partners, family members or, potentially, live-in roommates; some ‘weak’ ties were lost, and interactions became more limited to those closest. Given that peripheral, weaker social ties provide a diversity of resources, opinions and support, 7 COVID-19 likely resulted in networks that were smaller and more homogenous.

Such changes were not inevitable nor necessarily enduring, since social networks are also adaptive and responsive to change, in that a disruption to usual ways of interacting can be replaced by new ways of engaging (eg, Zoom). Yet, important inequalities exist, wherein networks and individual relationships within networks are not equally able to adapt to such changes. For example, individuals with a large number of newly established relationships (eg, university students) may have struggled to transfer these relationships online, resulting in lost contacts and a heightened risk of social isolation. This is consistent with research suggesting that young adults were the most likely to report a worsening of relationships during COVID-19, whereas older adults were the least likely to report a change. 8

Lastly, social connections give rise to emergent properties of social systems, 9 where a community-level phenomenon develops that cannot be attributed to any one member or portion of the network. For example, local area-based networks emerged due to geographic restrictions (eg, stay-at-home orders), resulting in increases in neighbourly support and local volunteering. 10 In fact, research suggests that relationships with neighbours displayed the largest net gain in ratings of relationship quality compared with a range of relationship types (eg, partner, colleague, friend). 8 Much of this was built from spontaneous individual interactions within local communities, which together contributed to the ‘community spirit’ that many experienced. 11 COVID-19 restrictions thus impacted the personal social networks and the structure of the larger networks within the society.

Social support

Social support, referring to the psychological and material resources provided through social interaction, is a critical mechanism through which social relationships benefit health. In fact, social support has been shown to be one of the most important resilience factors in the aftermath of stressful events. 12 In the context of COVID-19, the usual ways in which individuals interact and obtain social support have been severely disrupted.

One such disruption has been to opportunities for spontaneous social interactions. For example, conversations with colleagues in a break room offer an opportunity for socialising beyond one’s core social network, and these peripheral conversations can provide a form of social support. 13 14 A chance conversation may lead to advice helpful to coping with situations or seeking formal help. Thus, the absence of these spontaneous interactions may mean the reduction of indirect support-seeking opportunities. While direct support-seeking behaviour is more effective at eliciting support, it also requires significantly more effort and may be perceived as forceful and burdensome. 15 The shift to homeworking and closure of community venues reduced the number of opportunities for these spontaneous interactions to occur, and has, second, focused them locally. Consequently, individuals whose core networks are located elsewhere, or who live in communities where spontaneous interaction is less likely, have less opportunity to benefit from spontaneous in-person supportive interactions.

However, alongside this disruption, new opportunities to interact and obtain social support have arisen. The surge in community social support during the initial lockdown mirrored that often seen in response to adverse events (eg, natural disasters 16 ). COVID-19 restrictions that confined individuals to their local area also compelled them to focus their in-person efforts locally. Commentators on the initial lockdown in the UK remarked on extraordinary acts of generosity between individuals who belonged to the same community but were unknown to each other. However, research on adverse events also tells us that such community support is not necessarily maintained in the longer term. 16

Meanwhile, online forms of social support are not bound by geography, thus enabling interactions and social support to be received from a wider network of people. Formal online social support spaces (eg, support groups) existed well before COVID-19, but have vastly increased since. While online interactions can increase perceived social support, it is unclear whether remote communication technologies provide an effective substitute from in-person interaction during periods of social distancing. 17 18 It makes intuitive sense that the usefulness of online social support will vary by the type of support offered, degree of social interaction and ‘online communication skills’ of those taking part. Youth workers, for instance, have struggled to keep vulnerable youth engaged in online youth clubs, 19 despite others finding a positive association between amount of digital technology used by individuals during lockdown and perceived social support. 20 Other research has found that more frequent face-to-face contact and phone/video contact both related to lower levels of depression during the time period of March to August 2020, but the negative effect of a lack of contact was greater for those with higher levels of usual sociability. 21 Relatedly, important inequalities in social support exist, such that individuals who occupy more socially disadvantaged positions in society (eg, low socioeconomic status, older people) tend to have less access to social support, 22 potentially exacerbated by COVID-19.

Social and interactional norms

Interactional norms are key relational mechanisms which build trust, belonging and identity within and across groups in a system. Individuals in groups and societies apply meaning by ‘approving, arranging and redefining’ symbols of interaction. 23 A handshake, for instance, is a powerful symbol of trust and equality. Depending on context, not shaking hands may symbolise a failure to extend friendship, or a failure to reach agreement. The norms governing these symbols represent shared values and identity; and mutual understanding of these symbols enables individuals to achieve orderly interactions, establish supportive relationship accountability and connect socially. 24 25

Physical distancing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 radically altered these norms of interaction, particularly those used to convey trust, affinity, empathy and respect (eg, hugging, physical comforting). 26 As epidemic waves rose and fell, the work to negotiate these norms required intense cognitive effort; previously taken-for-granted interactions were re-examined, factoring in current restriction levels, own and (assumed) others’ vulnerability and tolerance of risk. This created awkwardness, and uncertainty, for example, around how to bring closure to an in-person interaction or convey warmth. The instability in scripted ways of interacting created particular strain for individuals who already struggled to encode and decode interactions with others (eg, those who are deaf or have autism spectrum disorder); difficulties often intensified by mask wearing. 27

Large social gatherings—for example, weddings, school assemblies, sporting events—also present key opportunities for affirming and assimilating interactional norms, building cohesion and shared identity and facilitating cooperation across social groups. 28 Online ‘equivalents’ do not easily support ‘social-bonding’ activities such as singing and dancing, and rarely enable chance/spontaneous one-on-one conversations with peripheral/weaker network ties (see the Social networks section) which can help strengthen bonds across a larger network. The loss of large gatherings to celebrate rites of passage (eg, bar mitzvah, weddings) has additional relational costs since these events are performed by and for communities to reinforce belonging, and to assist in transitioning to new phases of life. 29 The loss of interaction with diverse others via community and large group gatherings also reduces intergroup contact, which may then tend towards more prejudiced outgroup attitudes. While online interaction can go some way to mimicking these interaction norms, there are key differences. A sense of anonymity, and lack of in-person emotional cues, tends to support norms of polarisation and aggression in expressing differences of opinion online. And while online platforms have potential to provide intergroup contact, the tendency of much social media to form homogeneous ‘echo chambers’ can serve to further reduce intergroup contact. 30 31

Intimacy relates to the feeling of emotional connection and closeness with other human beings. Emotional connection, through romantic, friendship or familial relationships, fulfils a basic human need 32 and strongly benefits health, including reduced stress levels, improved mental health, lowered blood pressure and reduced risk of heart disease. 32 33 Intimacy can be fostered through familiarity, feeling understood and feeling accepted by close others. 34

Intimacy via companionship and closeness is fundamental to mental well-being. Positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has offered opportunities for individuals to (re)connect and (re)strengthen close relationships within their household via quality time together, following closure of many usual external social activities. Research suggests that the first full UK lockdown period led to a net gain in the quality of steady relationships at a population level, 35 but amplified existing inequalities in relationship quality. 35 36 For some in single-person households, the absence of a companion became more conspicuous, leading to feelings of loneliness and lower mental well-being. 37 38 Additional pandemic-related relational strain 39 40 resulted, for some, in the initiation or intensification of domestic abuse. 41 42

Physical touch is another key aspect of intimacy, a fundamental human need crucial in maintaining and developing intimacy within close relationships. 34 Restrictions on social interactions severely restricted the number and range of people with whom physical affection was possible. The reduction in opportunity to give and receive affectionate physical touch was not experienced equally. Many of those living alone found themselves completely without physical contact for extended periods. The deprivation of physical touch is evidenced to take a heavy emotional toll. 43 Even in future, once physical expressions of affection can resume, new levels of anxiety over germs may introduce hesitancy into previously fluent blending of physical and verbal intimate social connections. 44

The pandemic also led to shifts in practices and norms around sexual relationship building and maintenance, as individuals adapted and sought alternative ways of enacting sexual intimacy. This too is important, given that intimate sexual activity has known benefits for health. 45 46 Given that social restrictions hinged on reducing household mixing, possibilities for partnered sexual activity were primarily guided by living arrangements. While those in cohabiting relationships could potentially continue as before, those who were single or in non-cohabiting relationships generally had restricted opportunities to maintain their sexual relationships. Pornography consumption and digital partners were reported to increase since lockdown. 47 However, online interactions are qualitatively different from in-person interactions and do not provide the same opportunities for physical intimacy.

Recommendations and conclusions

In the sections above we have outlined the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted social relationships, showing how relational mechanisms key to health have been undermined. While some of the damage might well self-repair after the pandemic, there are opportunities inherent in deliberative efforts to build back in ways that facilitate greater resilience in social and community relationships. We conclude by making three recommendations: one regarding public health responses to the pandemic; and two regarding social recovery.

Recommendation 1: explicitly count the relational cost of public health policies to control the pandemic

Effective handling of a pandemic recognises that social, economic and health concerns are intricately interwoven. It is clear that future research and policy attention must focus on the social consequences. As described above, policies which restrict physical mixing across households carry heavy and unequal relational costs. These include for individuals (eg, loss of intimate touch), dyads (eg, loss of warmth, comfort), networks (eg, restricted access to support) and communities (eg, loss of cohesion and identity). Such costs—and their unequal impact—should not be ignored in short-term efforts to control an epidemic. Some public health responses—restrictions on international holiday travel and highly efficient test and trace systems—have relatively small relational costs and should be prioritised. At a national level, an earlier move to proportionate restrictions, and investment in effective test and trace systems, may help prevent escalation of spread to the point where a national lockdown or tight restrictions became an inevitability. Where policies with relational costs are unavoidable, close attention should be paid to the unequal relational impact for those whose personal circumstances differ from normative assumptions of two adult families. This includes consideration of whether expectations are fair (eg, for those who live alone), whether restrictions on social events are equitable across age group, religious/ethnic groupings and social class, and also to ensure that the language promoted by such policies (eg, households; families) is not exclusionary. 48 49 Forethought to unequal impacts on social relationships should thus be integral to the work of epidemic preparedness teams.

Recommendation 2: intelligently balance online and offline ways of relating

A key ingredient for well-being is ‘getting together’ in a physical sense. This is fundamental to a human need for intimate touch, physical comfort, reinforcing interactional norms and providing practical support. Emerging evidence suggests that online ways of relating cannot simply replace physical interactions. But online interaction has many benefits and for some it offers connections that did not exist previously. In particular, online platforms provide new forms of support for those unable to access offline services because of mobility issues (eg, older people) or because they are geographically isolated from their support community (eg, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth). Ultimately, multiple forms of online and offline social interactions are required to meet the needs of varying groups of people (eg, LGBTQ, older people). Future research and practice should aim to establish ways of using offline and online support in complementary and even synergistic ways, rather than veering between them as social restrictions expand and contract. Intelligent balancing of online and offline ways of relating also pertains to future policies on home and flexible working. A decision to switch to wholesale or obligatory homeworking should consider the risk to relational ‘group properties’ of the workplace community and their impact on employees’ well-being, focusing in particular on unequal impacts (eg, new vs established employees). Intelligent blending of online and in-person working is required to achieve flexibility while also nurturing supportive networks at work. Intelligent balance also implies strategies to build digital literacy and minimise digital exclusion, as well as coproducing solutions with intended beneficiaries.

Recommendation 3: build stronger and sustainable localised communities

In balancing offline and online ways of interacting, there is opportunity to capitalise on the potential for more localised, coherent communities due to scaled-down travel, homeworking and local focus that will ideally continue after restrictions end. There are potential economic benefits after the pandemic, such as increased trade as home workers use local resources (eg, coffee shops), but also relational benefits from stronger relationships around the orbit of the home and neighbourhood. Experience from previous crises shows that community volunteer efforts generated early on will wane over time in the absence of deliberate work to maintain them. Adequately funded partnerships between local government, third sector and community groups are required to sustain community assets that began as a direct response to the pandemic. Such partnerships could work to secure green spaces and indoor (non-commercial) meeting spaces that promote community interaction. Green spaces in particular provide a triple benefit in encouraging physical activity and mental health, as well as facilitating social bonding. 50 In building local communities, small community networks—that allow for diversity and break down ingroup/outgroup views—may be more helpful than the concept of ‘support bubbles’, which are exclusionary and less sustainable in the longer term. Rigorously designed intervention and evaluation—taking a systems approach—will be crucial in ensuring scale-up and sustainability.

The dramatic change to social interaction necessitated by efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 created stark challenges but also opportunities. Our essay highlights opportunities for learning, both to ensure the equity and humanity of physical restrictions, and to sustain the salutogenic effects of social relationships going forward. The starting point for capitalising on this learning is recognition of the disruption to relational mechanisms as a key part of the socioeconomic and health impact of the pandemic. In recovery planning, a general rule is that what is good for decreasing health inequalities (such as expanding social protection and public services and pursuing green inclusive growth strategies) 4 will also benefit relationships and safeguard relational mechanisms for future generations. Putting this into action will require political will.

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Twitter @karenmaxSPHSU, @Mark_McCann, @Rwilsonlowe, @KMitchinGlasgow

Contributors EL and KM led on the manuscript conceptualisation, review and editing. SP, KM, CB, RBP, RL, MM, JR, KS and RW-L contributed to drafting and revising the article. All authors assisted in revising the final draft.

Funding The research reported in this publication was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00022/1, MC_UU_00022/3) and the Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU11, SPHSU14). EL is also supported by MRC Skills Development Fellowship Award (MR/S015078/1). KS and MM are also supported by a Medical Research Council Strategic Award (MC_PC_13027).

Competing interests None declared.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Well-Being: A Literature Review

Maria gayatri.

1 Directorate for Development of Service Quality of Family Planning, National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN), Jakarta, Indonesia

Mardiana Dwi Puspitasari

2 Research Center for Population, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Jakarta, Indonesia

Background: COVID-19 has changed family life, including employment status, financial security, the mental health of individual family members, children's education, family well-being, and family resilience. The aim of this study is to analyze the previous studies in relation to family well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A literature review was conducted on PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus for studies using a cross-sectional or quasi-experimental design published from their inception to October 15, 2020, using the keywords “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” “family,” “welfare,” “well-being,” and “resilience.” A manual search on Google Scholar was used to find relevant articles based on the eligibility criteria in this study. The presented conceptual framework is based on the family stress model to link the inherent pandemic hardships and the family well-being. Results: The results show that family income loss/economic difficulties, job loss, worsening mental health, and illness were reported in some families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Family life has been influenced since the early stage of the pandemic by the implementation of physical distancing, quarantine, and staying at home to curb the spread of coronavirus. During the pandemic, it is important to maintain family well-being by staying connected with communication, managing conflict, and making quality time within family. Conclusion: The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families, especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. Promoting family resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a form of pneumonia caused by the severe acute respiratory coronavirus syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ( Lai et al., 2020 ). The appearance of COVID-19 becomes an outbreak in December 2019 in China. The coronavirus disease can be transmitted through the respiratory tract, digestive system, and also mucosal surface ( Ye et al., 2020 ). Fever, cough, shortness of breath, and diarrhea are the symptoms of COVID-19 infection at the onset. The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought many changes to all the communities, workers, and families to reduce the spread of the coronavirus and limit its impact on health, societal, and economic consequences. This pandemic had a powerful impact on family life. Mental resilience is required for coping strategies during the pandemic ( Barzilay et al., 2020 ).

COVID-19 has changed family life, including employment, financial instability, the mental health of family members, children's education, family well-being, and family resilience. People start to protect themselves from the spread of the coronavirus by physical and social distancing, sheltering-in-place, restricting travel, and implementing health protocols. Some public places are abrupt closures, such as schools, childcare centers, community programs, religious places, and workplaces. This change impacts social life, such as isolation, psychological distress, substantial economic distress, depression, and also domestic violence, including child abuse ( Campbell, 2020 ; Patrick et al., 2020 ). The Internet has become the most important thing to support all activities while staying at home and staying connected with others.

Families are forced to maintain a work–life balance in the same place with all family members during the pandemic ( Fisher et al., 2020 ). Parents are working from home while children are in school. Therefore, parents and children should share the space for their activities at home. On the one hand, parents should focus on their job to maintain their working target in order to avoid losing their job, heighten their financial concerns, sustain their food security, maintain healthy habits, and keep their family members safe from COVID-19. Balancing life during the pandemic is challenging ( Fisher et al., 2020 ). Fathers and mothers should work together not only on the paid job but also on domestic chores, childcare, and teaching their children.

The aim of this literature review is to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family well-being based on the previously published articles.

Literature Review

The coronavirus pandemic has become a public health crisis or disaster that has had an impact on family well-being both directly and indirectly. An infectious disease outbreak has spread rapidly, severely disrupted the world, and resulted in morbidity and mortality. This pandemic produced not only a health crisis, but also a social crisis among the population ( Murthy, 2020 ).

The conceptual framework was adapted from McCubbin and Patterson's family stress model. Using McCubbin and Patterson's family stress model, stressful life events (external stressors) had an impact on family life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a profound impact on Indonesian economic growth and labor market, indicating that more people were living in poverty ( Gandasari & Dwidienawati, 2020 ; Olivia et al., 2020 ; Suryahadi et al., 2020 ). Stress-frustration theory indicates that diminished economic resources in the family could add to stress, frustration, and conflict in interpersonal interactions, which might increase the risk of men committing violence against women ( Kaukinen, 2020 ). It means that unemployment and economic instability contributed to the family stress. Furthermore, the underlying pandemic difficulties posed a threat to Indonesian people's mental health ( Abdullah, 2020 ; Megatsari et al., 2020 ). A higher risk of stress could lead to domestic violence. Domestic violence was defined as a coping mechanism for stress induced by social-systemic variables, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness, loneliness, and ecological characteristics ( Zhang, 2020 ). Individual stress and other factors (such as job loss, lower income, limited resources and support, and hazardous and harmful alcohol use) were associated with domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Campbell, 2020 ). Indonesian children were also affected. A recent study found that the financial burden within the family constituted a risk to Indonesian child competency and adjustment ( Riany & Morawska, 2021 ). The well-being of children might be dependent on the well-being of their parents ( Dahl et al., 2014 ). As a result, the inherent pandemic hardships posed a risk to family well-being.

According to the family stress model, the family must engage in an active process to balance external stressors with personal and family resources and a positive outlook on COVID-19 in order to develop and sustain an adaptive coping strategy to face the inherent pandemic hardships and eventually reach a level of family well-being. Mental health and prevention from the risk of mental disorders were required by incorporating individuals, families, communities, and government during and after pandemic events, so that family well-being and resilience could be achieved and improved ( Murthy, 2020 ). Resilience was characterized as a process that encompassed not just successfully adapting and functioning after experiencing adversity or crisis, but also the possibility of personal and relationship transformation and positive growth as a result of adversity ( Walsh, 1996 ). There were three fundamental processes to becoming resilient: shared belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication processes within the family ( Walsh, 1996 ).

A literature review was conducted based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines ( Moher et al., 2009 ). This study was conducted from the beginning of March 2020, when the first positive case occurred in Indonesia, to October 1, 2020.

In order to meet the research objective, the authors carried out the literature review by searching various databases. The present study uses an integrative review to summarize the existing evidence to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family welfare. PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus are selected as the main sources of the article's database. A manual search on Google Scholar is also conducted to find relevant articles based on the study’s eligibility criteria. The following keywords are used to perform the search, such as “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “coronavirus,” “family,” “welfare,” “resilience,” and “mental health.” A total of 67 articles with the matching keywords were primarily retrieved.

Studies were eligible for inclusion if the studies are cross-sectional, experimental designs, or cohort studies describing the impact of the pandemics on family well-being both physical and mental well-being. Studies had to be published from the inception of the pandemic to October 15, 2020, in a journal with impact factors, English-language studies, and related to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some articles are excluded because they are duplicate articles or studies in non-English language. We also excluded opinions, letters to the editor, and systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Moreover, unpublished articles and reports are also excluded from this study. Finally, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight articles met the inclusion criteria, and the data were extracted for the next analysis.

Based on eight articles, the data were extracted to include some important information, such as (1) Country/Region, (2) The purpose of the study, (3) Methods of the study, (4) The respondents (sample size and sample characteristics), (5) the main result of the study. The data extraction is done using a form on Microsoft Excel. All articles in this study were evaluated using narrative synthesis and presented data in the table forms.

A total of eight articles were selected for this study, with various subjects consisting of children, adolescents, adults, and parents. The literature review in this study is based on previous studies in the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Israel, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Bangladesh. Common impacts are physiological stress, anxiety, depression, income loss, fear, economic hardship, food insecurity, and family violence. Higher resilience is associated with fewer COVID-19-related worries, lower anxiety, and lower depression. Greater parental control is associated with lower stress and a lower risk of child abuse. Positive children were infected by the household contact. The results of the review are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1.

Characteristics of the Studies.

Coronavirus diseases put families in uncertain conditions without clarity on how long the pandemic situation will last. The pandemic has caused many challenges that impact on family unit and the functions of the family unit, including distraction in family relationships ( Luttik et al., 2020 ). These challenges will have an influence on family well-being in many aspects, such as loss of community, loss of income, resources, planned activities, and travel due to quarantine. The concern about nuclear family members increased because they did not want their family to become ill from the coronavirus. It is suggested to not visit the older members or those with serious illnesses who are more vulnerable to the virus.

Family life has been influenced since the early stage of the pandemic by the implementation of physical distancing, quarantine, and staying at home to curb the spread of coronavirus. Physical and social distancing are effective mitigations to reduce the spread of the coronavirus during the outbreak. However, distancing requires adaptation among family members to improve family well-being. Sheltering-in-place makes more frequent interactions among family members because they have limited opportunities to have a leisure time into the outside world. This condition, on the one hand, can create a quality time and intimate interactions among family members, but on the other hand, it may lead to long-standing high conflicts, occasionally domestic violence, and divorce ( Lebow, 2020b ). In this condition, a home can be described as a place of warmth, love, and safety or as a place of intimidation, abuse, and fear ( Hitchings & Maclean, 2020 ). Other studies found a positive outlook on the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the necessity of focusing on and enjoying family relationships, especially taking advantage of the pandemic's gift of extended time together ( Evans et al., 2020 ; Holmberg et al., 2021 ). This optimistic attitude could function as a shared belief system within the family, resulting in family resilience. Working life balance at home during the time of COVID-19 provides a new chance for internal conflicts, disagreements, and arguments in which parents try to play their multi-roles with all family members to mitigate some problems such as unemployment and financial instability ( Lebow, 2020b ). Family income loss/economic difficulties, job loss, experienced hardships during the pandemic, worsening mental and behavioral health, stress, high anxiety, distress about family contracting COVID-19, and illness are reported in some families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Domestic violence related to mental and physical health may happen during the COVID-19 quarantine. Family members lived in complex situations during the pandemic, which increased the risk of overexposure by increasing the levels of stress, anxiety, and instability. The increase in domestic violence during the pandemic is reported in many countries, such as China, Brazil, the United States, and Italy, which may represent as “tip of the iceberg” since many victims do not have the freedom to report the abuse ( Campbell, 2020 ). Domestic violence is reported as physical harm, emotional harm, and abuse. Intimate partner violence is a common form of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Kaukinen, 2020 ; Zhang, 2020 ). There are three factors of family violence, such as the opportunities of family violence during lockdown and isolation at home, the economic crisis in the households, and insufficient social support for the victims of domestic violence ( Zhang, 2020 ). Individual resilience is a strong predictor of the willingness of people to cope with emergencies and challenges of different kinds, including the COVID-19 pandemic ( Kimhi et al., 2020 ). Individual resilience and well-being are significant factors influencing distress symptoms and a sense of danger ( Kimhi et al., 2020 ). Physical abuse, emotional abuse, and stalking are kinds of intimate partner violence that are experienced by some women during the COVID-19 quarantine ( Mazza et al., 2020 ).

Family violence is one of the causes of divorce. Family violence has become a serious social problem. During the pandemic in China, some couples decide to divorce due to family violence in their spousal relationship ( Zhang, 2020 ). Divorcing partners in the wake of COVID-19 have more complex issues because they should physically and emotionally separate in their households. It is suggested to involve family therapy so they can share their problems that arise readily to prevent anger, contempt, and other problematic conflicts ( Lebow, 2020b ). A good cooperation and communication among divorced parents may help children achieve their goals through this hard time. A recent study found that communication between two single parents discussing the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on their family life could acquire something considerably more significant than just support and self-discovery ( Abdellatif & Gatto, 2020 ).

Financial distress, economic depression, unemployment, poverty, and added stressors such as the care and homeschooling of children, social distancing, and family isolation have increased the opportunities for family violence ( Kaukinen, 2020 ; Zhang, 2020 ). Family members with lower financial income, lower education status, and lower occupational status are more likely to experience family violence, including family conflicts, economic distress, high tension, lower mental well-being, and insufficient support during physical distancing or lockdown ( Zhang, 2020 ). Families have been dealing with threats from COVID-19 pandemics, both direct and indirect effects ( Lebow, 2020a ). The direct effects are the loss of family members, anxiety feelings related to family loss, increased unemployment, limited physical and social contact, family stress, conflict, and financial vulnerability. During the pandemic, families may have a virtual connection to maintain their communication. Therefore, geographic challenges are becoming less important due to virtual interconnection. Furthermore, a recent study found that virtual communication during the COVID-19 pandemic could improve family well-being and happiness ( Gong et al., 2021 ). At this time, digital technology, which needs digital literacy, becomes essential ( Hitchings & Maclean, 2020 ).

The coronavirus pandemic has increased the risk of mental health problems (such as mood disorders, fear, anxiety, depression, alcohol and smoking abuse) as well as physical health problems (such as sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems, poorer health condition) ( Mazza et al., 2020 ). The mental problems are caused by work stress, financial stress, and changes in the social life. The coronavirus pandemic has increased the risk of mental disorders (such as mood disorders, anger, anxiety, depression, alcohol and smoking abuse) as well as physical disorders (such as sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal problems, poorer health condition). Children’s health and well-being are also in danger during the pandemic, because most of the children may get the transmission of the virus from their adult family members who were previously infected ( Su et al., 2020 ). Therefore, individual resilience and well-being as a part of family resilience and well-being should be maintained to cope with the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.

Homeschooling during the pandemic makes parental responsibilities extended to include being teachers, coaches, trainers, and mentors for their children's school from home and other extracurricular activities ( Lebow, 2020b ). The condition of staying at home may increase parental stressors, particularly for working parents who are responsible for their multi-task dealing with other stressful conditions as paid workers and also doing domestic tasks. Moreover, violence may increase among children during homeschooling. During this time, parents and children are similarly living with stress, fear, and many challenges because they share their activities in the same place for uncertain time. Some factors influence the home learning as a distance learning, such as poverty, the educational levels of parents, mental health, the availability of gadget, and Internet access. During the pandemic, however, parental involvement in their children's activities provided an opportunity to develop and preserve family well-being ( Evans et al., 2020 ).

During the pandemic, it should be more widely focused on helping family members generate their individual space. A good and intensive family communication is needed to deal with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some interventions are needed to improve maternal and child health and nutrition, such as strengthening the food supply chain, reducing food insecurity, building a net social security program, and a cash support program for the disadvantaged families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the literature review, it is recommended to increase public awareness to staying connected and reporting if they find any family violence. Improving the readiness and knowledge of healthcare providers and counselors is needed to provide counseling services to help families who have physical and mental health problems. Fulfilling parents with updated information and guidance is important to deal with pandemic especially how to have working life balance and quality of life between working, guiding children in their homeschooling and other activities. Providing parenting resources during COVID-19 including conflict management is needed to have positive relationship and manage parenting stress. The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families, especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. During the pandemic, it is important to maintain family well-being by staying connected with communication, managing conflict, and making quality time within family. Promoting family resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study has some limitations. The limitation of this article is the possibility of omission of the potential article related to the family welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the exclusion of unpublished articles will become another limitation. The findings of this literature review were mostly conducted in higher-income countries, which limits the generalization of the findings to low- and middle-income countries. The future research is required regarding family welfare as responses to women’s empowerment during the COVID-19 pandemic with homogenous family’s samples or with a large sample size with heterogeneity of welfare's status. The future research can be conducted by mixed methods between qualitative and quantitative methods.

COVID-19 outbreak around the world has become a public health concern. The coronavirus pandemic has had a substantial impact on the family's life. Physical and mental health problems, economic instability, and family violence are social issues during the pandemic that should be dealt with. The government should take action to mitigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the pandemic on families especially those who are vulnerable to losing household income. Promoting family welfare and resilience through shared beliefs and close relationships within families is needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs: Maria Gayatri https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2792-5586

Mardiana Dwi Puspitasari https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6827-3350

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