Accepted for/Published in: JMIRx Med
Date Submitted: Feb 23, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 23, 2021 - Apr 20, 2021
Date Accepted: Jul 13, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 4, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Impact On Mental Health Of College Students In India Due To COVID-19 Pandemic: Web-Based Cross-Sectional Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
COVID-19 pandemic has created mental health crisis among the college students of India due to restrictions, overwhelming COVID-19 cases, financial difficulty, etc. This mental health crisis has led to the development of a high degree of fear, anxiety, and depression among college students.
Objective:
The main objective of this study is to investigate symptoms of fear, depression, and anxiety among college students of India caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods:
The cross-sectional web-based research was conducted utilizing Google forms. The Google form included a socio-demographic questionnaire and psychometric scales evaluating the psychological and behavioral impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis have been performed for the study.
Results:
Total number of 324 college students participated in this study in which 180 (55.6%) were male and 144 (44.4%) were female. After assessment of the psychometric scales, it was found 223 students out of 324 students (68.8% ) had high fear, 93 students out of 324 students (28.7%) had moderate to severe depression, and 167 students out of 324 students (51.5%) had moderate to severe anxiety. Among the identified risk factor, age was significantly associated with fear of COVID-19 with a P-value of .047*. Any family member who got infected with COVID-19 was significantly associated with anxiety and depression with P-value .001*** and .018* respectively. The correlation of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale with the Generalized Anxiety Scale and The Brief Patient Health Questionnaire Scale was found to be 0.492 and 0.474 respectively.
Conclusions:
This research concludes that there is a very high fear of COVID-19 among students, along with anxiety and depression symptoms. This study also concludes that the fear of the COVID-19 scale has a moderate positive correlation with the anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9) scales.
Citation
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Copyright
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