Pandemic or pandæmonium: are the kids alright?
Partners:
Months of living in lockdown during a pandemic have been rough – especially for those with mental-health issues. Escalating fear of the virus, being isolated from friends and family as well as the stoppage of routines that were a lifeline for some have all had devastating effects. While mental health (and loneliness) was a priority for the government before Covid-19, it’s now generally accepted that too little attention was paid to how months alone could cause long-term problems for those with underlying mental-health conditions.
Some are concerned that children and young people, in particular, have suffered. In her last few months as children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield called on the government to create a ‘Nightingale moment’ to fund ‘extra training for teachers and counsellors in every school’. Her successor, Dame Rachel de Souza, has claimed that ‘children are the least likely to be affected by the virus but they have taken the worst hit’. Now that kids have been cooped up for months, some argue that problems with socialisation, anxiety and stress could be exacerbated. Some schools have noticed the phenomenon of ‘twitchy’ students returning to the classroom, with unrestricted screen time and a lack of routine at home leading to a loss in attention span and an inability to keep up with the school day.
It’s not just children, either. Some have pointed to the fact that many university students have struggled with their mental health, with the stresses of moving away from home exacerbated by the isolation of being forbidden from socialising. When a healthy work-life balance is limited by pub or social-club closures, SU officers on furlough and deserted campuses, many students have reported feeling low or worse during the pandemic. At the University of Bristol, a ‘happiness course’ has been offered to students, with a pay-off of 20 academic credits and the chance to ‘feel happier’ by studying the academic and practical science of happiness and mental wellbeing.
On the other hand, some argue that time away from the stress and strife of education has been good for young people. Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett argued that the school environment allows for ‘academic pressure, fraught social relationships, concerns about body image and appearance, bullying and sexual harassment’ – all of which, she claims, damages young people’s mental health. Research has also shown that some young people were less anxious and had been sleeping more easily during lockdown, leading one academic to raise questions ‘about the role of the school environment in explaining rises in mental-health difficulties among teenagers in recent years’. Therapists were already becoming a permanent fixture in education thanks to a heightened interest in young people’s mental health before Covid-19. Should we be telling them that it’s understandable to feel anxious during a global pandemic, instead of rushing them off to the counsellor’s office?
How has the pandemic affected young people’s mental health? Should we be focusing efforts to get young people back into formal education permanently to save them from their isolation? Or should less emphasis be placed on counsellors, and more support given to teachers – is it unreasonable to expect them to have to counsel their students as well as get them to retain knowledge in class? Or are we simply underestimating kids’ ability to bounce back, even after the toughest year some of them have ever faced?
