Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Lockdown on Psychological Health of Teenagers

Authors: Vijaya V. Handore, Sunita P. Patil

Pages: 36-38

Abstract:

COVID-19 pandemic is a global health emergency exhibiting severe impacts on the public health, including mental health .As a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in India, lockdown measures were enforced by the Government of India with four different phases starting from 25th March to 31st May 2020.The locked-down state causes various negative mental health outcomes and future insecurity. Therefore, present study was carried out with an objective to assess the impact of COVID- 19 lockdown on the psychological health of the teenagers. Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-42 i.e.DASS-42 was used to measure the dimensions of DAS. Sixty four samples i.e.male and female teenagers belonging to age group 13 to 19 were randomly selected. Due to the limitations of lock down, DASS-42 inventory was electronically distributed to the subjects. It was found that the psychological status of all the domains were found to differ according to the age gropus of both the genders .In case of female teenagers, age group 13 to 15 exhibited normal status towards all the domain. Whereas, in case of male teenagers, the normal status was shown by age group 15-17. The reason may be, in this pandemic, they may be feeling safe and secure in the home. Also, they are spending time with their family and they have been specially cared by their family in all respect. Moreover, they may feel more relaxed with the online academic activities as well as feeling free from the examinations burden .Thus,it can be concluded that there was not much serious impact of the lockdown phases on the psychological status of the teenagers indicating their positive attitude to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.