COVID-19 Effects on Children’s Mental Health and Schooling

COVID-19 Effects on Children’s Mental Health and Schooling
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Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1. Introduction PAGEREF _Toc93996674 \h 32. Discussion PAGEREF _Toc93996675 \h 42.1 Effects on Schooling PAGEREF _Toc93996676 \h 42.2 Effects on Mental Health PAGEREF _Toc93996677 \h 72.3 Recommended Measures PAGEREF _Toc93996678 \h 103. Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc93996679 \h 13References PAGEREF _Toc93996680 \h 14
1. Introduction
COVID-19 introduced a paradigm shift globally for most industries. In recent times, the pandemic outbreak transformed the process controls and outcomes for schools, child’s learning, and knowledge sharing culture worldwide. Teachers, parents, and children remained in collective coordination to overcome the gaps caused by recent shifts introduced by the COVID-19. However, the response measures developed by teachers and parents still underperform to provide cognitive wellbeing and competitive knowledge building among children (Rahim & Chandran, 2021). According to Maqsood et al. (2021), the pandemic outbreak exhibited different challenges for schooling systems while the management focused continuously on education quality. Globally, the educational sector has recently redefined success parameters for children to ensure fairness and efficacy in learning management systems.
This research aims to investigate the potential impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on children’s mental health and schooling. During the pandemic, the government introduced different preventive measures to practice social distancing and approaches to mitigate global contamination. Children are among the most influenced communities to experience cognitive and social wellbeing alterations in the process. However, the government kept the provisions strict offered minimal flexibility to ease public losses, such as unemployment, to control fatalities among children (Yamamura & Tsustsui, 2021). This research would examine the influence of the COVID-19 among children by observing parameters such as childcare delivery, the introduction of home-based schooling, nutrition, fear of the unknown, mental illness, and interruptions in learning outcomes. The investigation would conclude by making rational recommendations to education institutions and parents to overcome the childcare and cognitive development gaps.
2. Discussion
2.1 Effects on Schooling
Schools in the pre-pandemic era used offline methods to deliver learning outcomes among children. Children tend to physically attend to the classroom environment and interact with teachers for continuous monitoring. However, the COVID-19 outbreak introduced a rapid shift in-process controls. Schools and other learning methods adopted digital solutions to continue the learning exchanges (Sharma & Singh, 2020). The shifts introduced different challenges for children to understand the process control and cope with the transformations in the learning outcomes. According to a survey in Indonesia, 73.2% of teachers reportedly distribute assignments without maintaining necessary interactions with parents and children. As a result, children could not interact frequently and share psychological disorders with teachers and caregivers (Asvial, Mayangsari & Yudistriansyah, 2021). According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) statistics, more than 800 million learners in 102 countries were influenced by the transformed classroom environments during the pandemic. UNESCO further disclosed that 1 out of 4 learners could not attend high schools due to national lockdowns and other challenges in routine lives (UNESCO, 2020).
Interrupted learning in high schools was a primary challenge encountered by children. According to Senol, Lesinger and Caglar (2021), children experience various obstacles during online classes. Teachers and professors had minimal training and familiarity while adopting the aesthetics of e-classrooms. Most teachers remained under-competent to ensure the continuous engagement of children in e-classrooms. As a result, students experienced learning dilemmas while interacting with peers and instructors. Students would either receive unsatisfactory responses to the queries or choose to remain silent (Favara et al., 2021). Collectively, both scenarios influenced the learning outcomes by interrupting the awareness and knowledge among children. Unfortunately, the teachers would remain unaware of the interruptions among children since physical interaction is eliminated in the e-classrooms during the pandemic (Senol, Lesinger and Caglar, 2021). Hence, interrupted learning became a fundamental challenge for students who engaged in e-classrooms during the pandemic.
Learning in e-classrooms experienced infrastructure and financial interruptions during the pandemic. According to Em (2021), children require smartphones, internet connectivity, and phone credits as mandatory resources to attend online classroom sessions. Unfortunately, most households in affected countries could not provide a continuous supply of specified resources due to financial constraints and unemployment incurred during the pandemic (Chang et al., 2021). In such circumstances, students remained disoriented from the e-classrooms. Most students were absent during coursework, while teachers were unaware of the lack of resources among children to attend online sessions with continuity. The social distancing and rapid digital transformation in schools created a communication gap among children, parents, and teachers collectively. As a result, the specified stakeholders could not interact and share problems related to resource scarcity while attending e-classrooms. In the long run, children could not exhibit resource eligibility to attend classroom sessions, resulting in learning interruptions (Wong & Tang, 2021). Hence, interruption in the learning process became a fundamental influence on children during the pandemic.
The secondary challenge experienced by children during the COVID-19 outbreak and e-classroom environment is the disturbance in childcare. Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque (2021) investigated the schools and disturbances in childcare within the United Kingdom (UK) during the pandemic. The investigation outcomes suggest that children felt ignored during the COVID-19 outbreak. Arguably, introducing a ‘new normal’ phenomenon worldwide established the concepts of work-from-home (WFH) and social distancing in societies (Knize et al., 2021). As a result, childcare is ignored in households since parents are engaged in WFH to arrange financial resources for meeting expenditures.
On the contrary, the social distancing and national lockdowns prevented students from attending schools, creating gaps in childcare exchanges between children and teachers. In the long run, children would feel emotional and cognitive imbalances due to the continuous unavailability of parents and teachers (Fodor et al., 2021). Findings suggested by Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque (2021) indicate that e-classrooms and distance from teachers posed children to health risks in the UK.
Lastly, the effect on child nutrition is another outcome of the COVID-19 outbreak. Schools provide discounted food supplies to children for meeting nutritional requirements. Most schools are direct contributors in society to mitigate food insecurities among children by providing a continuous supply of discounted meals. However, school lockdowns during the pandemic created physical development challenges among children, such as malnutrition and food insecurity (Munir, 2021). As Em (2021) identified previously, resource availability is crucial for children during the pandemic. Food supply and nutrition are the equal constraints for children encountered during school lockdowns. Children made choices between nutrition supplies and classroom resources to attend learning sessions. In the long run, children attending e-classes became victims of malnutrition (Abukabda & Razzaque, 2021). The childcare remained compromised during the pandemic worldwide, influencing children to receive a rational supply of basic resources by parents and teachers.
The overall analysis suggested that lockdowns during the pandemic collectively influenced children’s physical health and learning outcomes. Children experienced distancing from parents and teachers, which disturbed basic childcare parameters. Most children experienced malnutrition and food insecurity since schools failed to provide discounted meals due to functional disturbances. On the contrary, children felt compromised due to the unavailability of resources required for attending e-classrooms. While parents experienced a financial dilemma in households to ensure continuous resource supply to children, teachers could not deliver competitive learning experiences in e-classrooms since the paradigm shift was new. The COVID-19 outbreak influenced children’s childcare, learning, and collaborative development worldwide.
2.2 Effects on Mental Health
Arguably, the COVID-19 outbreak introduced a new range of challenges for children in terms of mental wellbeing and stability. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the pandemic influenced child’s wellbeing by injecting negative emotions. Globally, children were confined in homes to avoid contamination from the COVID-19 virus (Fore, 2021). The classroom interaction transformed into digital learning sessions, creating physical isolation among children. Besides, children during the pandemic are least likely to adopt extrovert personality traits due to disturbances in physical interactions. As a result, the social circle contracted immediately during the pandemic, creating a halo effect among children (Shah et al., 2020). Continuous exposure to global media and digital channels influenced children to conceive negative news related to widespread and global contamination viruses. Under such circumstances, children are more likely to develop negative emotions and perceptions from the environment. UNICEF further reported that more than 330 million children are least likely to develop normal reflexes and response timings due to interruptions in physical interactions with the environment (Fore, 2021).
In another statistical survey, UNICEF explored that children suffer enhanced mental disorders during the pandemic, resulting in frequent fatalities. The report suggested that 1 in 7 children, aging between 10 years and 19 years, are subject to chronic mental disorders. Such children continuously suffer from anxiety, insecurity, and social isolation, which strengthened further during the COVID-19 restrictions (UNICEF, 2021). As a result, a child would commit suicide or be emotionally paralyzed due to a constant engagement in a mental condition. Simultaneously, such conditions go unnoticed during the pandemic since children are not interacting with parents, teachers, and peers to seek health assistance. UNICEF declared that government spending on child health increased by 2% due to mental illness explored during the pandemic. Since FY2020, governments worldwide have spent USD390 billion to cure mental disorders among children (UNICEF, 2021).
A study conducted by Shah et al. (2020) explored that the pandemic caused stress, anxiety, and related cognitive conditions more frequently among children. Children are separated socially from parents, teachers, friends, and other individuals in the environment to practice social distancing. In most scenarios, children cannot communicate general problems and emotional states with their caregivers, causing severe stress, anxiety, and depression (Shah et al., 2020). Under such conditions, children experience frequent panic attacks and mood disorders while simultaneously developing a fear of the unknown towards the future. Most children are not receiving timely shifts of positive experiences from the environment, causing further stress in routine lives. As a result, children gradually de...