Assignment Sample on Impact of Covid-19 on the Mental Health
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
A pandemic cannot be just justified by saying that it is a medical anomaly; rather it can be considered as a situation where it is affecting mental health of individuals as well as society. Due to COVID 19, people are facing a lot of mental issues like depression, anxiety, stress, hypertension and xenophobia (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2021). It has been observed that majority of people who are affected are individuals who are aged between 18 and 25. There are severe effects of these pandemic involving different levels of severity among different people. In order to break chain of transmission people are required to stay at home (Jarvis et al. 2020). The practice of social distancing, isolation and closure of all entertainment venues has been adopted so that this chain can break and transmission can be reduced as much as possible.
According to study, it has been found out that pandemic has severely affected the mental conditions of people in UK. It has been observed that around 14% of population’s mental health has a severe impact (yougov.co.uk, 2021). Around 31% of population has no impact on their mental well-being and are absolutely fine. On other hand, 8% of UK’s population says that this pandemic has actually led to a fast improvement in their mental condition. The age group between 18 and 25 has been most negatively affected and around 60% of them have a severe impact on their mental conditions. People between ages of 18 and 25 are young population who are considered to be very socially active and outgoing (Kim and Asbury, 2020). In order to prevent the flow of transmission people are forced to stay at home which has become very frustrating and irritating for people.
1.2 Synopsis of literature review
There are several factors which have contributed towards mental health issues during this pandemic.
Isolation and Social Distancing
Isolation and social distancing have been one of major factors among all. Closure of universities and reduction in income of an individual has also contributed towards the deteriorating mental health conditions of an individual (Dib et al. 2020). People were having difficulties in finding appropriate treatment for their poor mental condition which resulted in more severe impacts.
Loss of jobs and reduction in job opportunities
Loss of jobs and reduction in job opportunities among youth has caused anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts (Smith et al. 2020). People were facing problems of low self-esteem and distress which eventually led to severe suicidal thoughts among them. Due to social distancing, people are feeling lonely which creates depression and increases stress level among them.
1.3 Rationale
The concern of mental conditions of people in UK has increased after the pandemic. It has also been observed that suicides rates have a great rise and worsen during this situation. According to research, Drug overdose deaths have been highest particularly from March to May (Kwong et al. 2020). Youth of UK has been at a high risk due to their poor and deteriorating mental conditions. One of the major reasons behind this is not receiving mental treatment at right time. Health Care systems are majorly concerned about this deadly virus that mental condition of individuals has been ignored by them.
The most negative impact on mental health has occurred due to quarantine and self- isolation. The correct measures at individual and societal level are required in order to overcome this situation. People tend to have mixed emotions. If suddenly these emotions are confronted to such a situation which is new to them then it has a high chance that it can easily damage their mental health (Trivedi et al. 2021). There are some severe impacts of such deteriorating mental health which includes increased sadness, depression, annoyed behaviour, unexpected headaches, too much stress and changing in eating habits of an individual. Due to pandemic, people who were not exposed to mental issues are now developing severe mental health conditions which are not at all a good sign. The majority of population who has been found affected most is youth including all individuals who are college students, working class and aspirants.
1.4 Research Gap
Undergoing this research process researchers have found many related articles that state people within UK are having mental health issues due to COVID-19 pandemic. Due to their ill mental health issues, people are unable to maintain their stability which is leading them towards anxiety and depression. On other hand, there are a very limited number of articles or solutions that might assist these people in resolving their problems. Thus, it can be stated as gap within this literature.
2. Aim, research questions and Objectives
2.1 Aim
The main aim of this research is to find out impact of COVID 19 on the mental health conditions of individuals aged between 18 to 25 years in UK.
2.2 Objectives
- To analyse factors affecting the mental health of individuals aged between 18 to 25 years in UK due in Covid 19 situation
- To identify the mental issues faced by 18-25 years individuals in UK due in Covid 19
- To determine the impact of COVID 19 on mental health conditions of individuals aged between 18 to 25 years in UK
2.3 Questions
- What are factors affecting the mental health of individuals aged between 18 to 25 years in UK due in Covid 19 situation?
- What are the mental issues faced by 18-25 years individuals in UK due in Covid 19?
- How does COVID 19 impact on mental health conditions of individuals aged between 18 to 25 years in UK?
3 Methodology
3.1 Describe and justify methodological approach
Positivism philosophy will be used to conduct this research as they are considered to be quite observable and quantifiable (Marsonet, 2019). It leads to statistical analyses as they are mostly dependent on quantifiable observation that would be very beneficial to conduct this type of research. In this kind of philosophy, research problems help in making choices for research philosophy. The approach that will be taken for this research is deductive approach. This kind of approach is mainly associated with scientific investigations. This approach would be very beneficial for conducting this research because the relationship between concepts and variables can be properly explained.
3.2 Research Design and Method
The research design that will be used to conduct this research will be descriptive design. A variety of research methods can be used to investigate one or more variables using a descriptive research design (Gunawan et al. 2019). The reason behind using this particular design for this research is because it will properly describe a population that has been mentally affected through this deadly virus. Descriptive design focuses on recognising features, frequencies, trends as well as categories. As COVID 19 is a new concept and there are no proper resources through which relevant data can be collected then in this case descriptive design will highly be recommended. When there is not much knowledge about the topic, then descriptive design is very useful.
The method that would be most appropriate choice for conducting this research is qualitative research method. Here, main focus will be not quality resources rather than quantity (Malik and Roy, 2017). With help of qualitative research one can understand concepts, ideas or experiences as it involves collection and analysis of all non- numerical data. The reason behind choosing this research method will help in providing insights and will help in generating new ideas for research. A proper understanding of how people of UK get affected by this pandemic will be provided through qualitative research. This will help in getting knowledge about what people of UK actually experienced. Qualitative research is flexible and provides meaningful insights.
3.3 Access to data
During pandemic, it is very difficult to collect data through primary research methods therefore main source of data collection will be through secondary sources. The first main source through which data will be accessed is by published source (Beugelsdijk et al. 2020). Another source will be journals as they are regularly updated with latest publications that will be helpful in getting date information. Newspapers will also be used as it will provide most authentic data among all. Another good source of information would be websites which are regulated regularly as they can be easily trusted. Government records as it will provide current and relevant data related to COVID 19 situations. Lastly, books will also be used to collect required amount of data.
3.4 Sampling methods
For this study, four journals and two books will be used for conducting this research. The sampling method that would be used will be a random sampling method (Setiyadi and Setiawan 2018). In this method, there is equal probability for each sample to be chosen. Random sampling helps in providing an unbiased random sample which is very necessary to draw a conclusion in end. It has been considered to be most helpful and straightforward approach to get a random sample for research.
3.5 Data collection and analysis
The data collection method that will be used to conduct this research is a secondary data collection method. In secondary data collection, information is collected by someone else rather than actual user. In secondary data collection method, existing data are used rather than creating new data. It helps in enhancing overall effectiveness of research by summarizing and collating existing data (Suleimenov et al. 2018). In this case, research material will be collected through research reports and documents that would be relevant to given study. Published resources, journals, newspaper, website, government records and books would be considered for this study.
For analysis, thematic analysis will be done for research. It is considered to be most appropriate method for conducting analysis for qualitative data. To identify common themes, researchers closely examine and study relevant data available. There are various steps involved in a thematic analysis that needs to follow while organizing a result for a research.
3.6 Limitations
A lot of limitations and issues have been faced while preparing this particular research. One of major issues was problems with sample and selection (Covingtonand Duff, 2021). There was numerous times when sampling errors occurred which created sample bias. Insufficient sample size for statistical measurement was collected which sometimes concluded an invalid research result. As there were very minimal amounts of resources on this topic so another issue faced was lack of previous research studies on topic. On a personal level, there was limited access to data and there were also time constraints.
4. Ethical Issues
While conducting the research, there were a lot of issues that have been faced. As COVID 19 is a recent invention, therefore, there has been poor study design which was published in newspapers (Thomas et al. 2017). The statistical information about pandemic often goes undetected which has created a lot of problems while preparing a proper research for this study. There is a chunk of published articles about impact of COVID 19 in UK but they are scientifically unreliable. Due to which it is just a waste of money as well as resources. Another issue that has been faced while conducting research was problem of research accessibility. It is very difficult to pay for paywalled research as they are quite expensive and cannot be affordable by everyone. Due to social distancing, it was difficult to collect and accommodate correct source for primary data that will be required to conduct research. During a pandemic, access to library management was hard and a lot of time was wasted on finding a correct source through which information can be gathered. There have been times where resources were available but much of data was insufficient to rely on (Shaw, 2021). Very limited website provides authentic data about impact of COVID 19 on mental conditions which made research a lot more difficult. Financial crunch is another major problem that was faced during research. It was tough to secure and sustain funds while doing the research as income level is very low during lockdown. A lot of problems were faced which included lack of standardization and incentivizing participation. Majority of the time has to rely upon the self-reported data as other data did not provide the resources about topic given. It was too hard to conduct quality research without a required number of resources.
5. Conclusion
COVID 19 has severely impacted the mental health conditions of individuals aged between 18 and 25 in UK. The research has been systematically conducted describing the methodological approach that has been adopted. Along with that, it also gives a brief knowledge about design and method. The ways through which data is collected is also mentioned along with sampling methods. Proper data collection and analysis is stated along with all limitations faced during preparing research report. In end, all ethical issues have also been properly described.
6. References
Jarvis, C.I., Van Zandvoort, K., Gimma, A., Prem, K., Klepac, P., Rubin, G.J. and Edmunds, W.J., 2020. Quantifying the impact of physical distance measures on the transmission of COVID-19 in the UK. BMC medicine, 18, pp.1-10.
Dib, S., Rougeaux, E., Vázquez-Vázquez, A., Wells, J.C. and Fewtrell, M., 2020. The impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on maternal mental health and coping in the UK: Data from the COVID-19 New Mum Study. medRxiv.
Smith, S., Gilbert, S., Ariyo, K., Arundell, L.L., Bhui, K., Das-Munshi, J., Hatch, S. and Lamb, N., 2020. Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7(7), p.e40.
Kwong, A.S., Pearson, R.M., Adams, M.J., Northstone, K., Tilling, K., Smith, D., Fawns-Ritchie, C., Bould, H., Warne, N., Zammit, S. and Gunnell, D., 2020. Mental health before and during COVID-19 in two longitudinal UK population cohorts. The British Journal of Psychiatry, pp.1-27.
Trivedi, N., Trivedi, V., Moorthy, A. and Trivedi, H., 2021. Recovery, restoration, and risk: a cross-sectional survey of the impact of COVID-19 on GPs in the first UK city to lock down. BJGP open, 5(1).
Marsonet, M., 2019. Philosophy and logical positivism. Academicus International Scientific Journal, 10(19), pp.32-36.
Suleimenov, I., Massalimova, A., Bakirov, A. and Gabrielyan, O., 2018. Neural networks and the philosophy of dialectical positivism. In MATEC Web of Conferences (Vol. 214, p. 02002). EDP Sciences.
Gunawan, I., Kusumaningrum, D.E. and Sumarsono, R.B., 2019, December. Investigation of Principal Leadership Based on Pesantren: Descriptive Study about Implementation of Human Resources Empowerment Models Based on Soft System Methodology. In The 4th International Conference on Education and Management (COEMA 2019) (pp. 255-258). Atlantis Press.
Malik, H. and Roy, K., 2017. A Descriptive Study to Assess the Knowledge and Attitude of Adolescents Regarding Mismanagement of Plastic Wastes and its Environmental Hazards in Selected Community Area, Nelamangala. Int J Sci Res, 6, pp.677-80.
Beugelsdijk, S., van Witteloostuijn, A. and Meyer, K.E., 2020. A new approach to data access and research transparency (DART).
Setiyadi, A. and Setiawan, E.B., 2018, August. Information System Monitoring Access Log Database on Database Server. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 407, No. 1, p. 012110). IOP Publishing.
Covington, N.V. and Duff, M.C., 2021. Heterogeneity is a hallmark of traumatic brain injury, not a limitation: A new perspective on study design in rehabilitation research. American journal of speech-language pathology, 30(2S), pp.974-985.
Thomas, D.R., Pastrana, S., Hutchings, A., Clayton, R. and Beresford, A.R., 2017, November. Ethical issues in research using datasets of illicit origin. In Proceedings of the 2017 Internet Measurement Conference (pp. 445-462).
Shaw, D., 2021. Triaging ethical issues in the coronavirus pandemic: how to prioritize bioethics research during public health emergencies. Bioethics, 35(4), pp.380-384.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (2021), The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic’s impact on mental health, Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361582/ [Accessed on: 1st July 2021]
yougov.co.uk (2021), Half of Britons say that their mental health has deteriorated as a result of coronavirus, Available at: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2021/02/04/impact-coronavirus-mental-health-and-relationships [Accessed on: 2nd July 2021]
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