Proposed Title of Research Interest
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on JHCSC - Main Campus College Students’ Mental Health
and Wellness
Proponent:
Nabasca, Charry M.
Villacrusis, Charyl P.
Bulataolo, Glory Mie
Area of Study (Field of Specialization)
Fitness and Wellness
Background of the Study
Student mental health in higher education has been an increasing concern. The COVID-19
pandemic situation has brought this vulnerable population into renewed focus.
Mental health issues are the leading impediment to academic success. Mental illness can affect
students’ motivation, concentration, and social interactions—crucial factors for students to
succeed in higher education. The 2019 Annual Report of the Center for Collegiate Mental
Health reported that anxiety continues to be the most common problem (62.7% of 82,685
respondents) among students who completed the Counseling Center Assessment of
Psychological Symptoms, with clinicians also reporting that anxiety continues to be the most
common diagnosis of the students that seek services at university counseling centers.
The aim of the analysis is to understand the effects of the pandemic and the resulting
mitigation strategies on the emotional health and wellness of first-year college students. There
are a number of additional reasons why students in particular may be at risk. Many
undergraduate students faced this disruption without a familiar routine and support to provide a
sense of stability and coherence.
For this reason, the researchers intend to bridge the gap by conducting a timely assessment of
the effects of this pandemic on the mental health and wellness of college students.
Due to the long-lasting pandemic situation and onerous measures such as lockdown and stay-
at-home orders, the COVID-19 pandemic brings negative impacts on higher education. The
findings of our study highlight the urgent need to develop interventions and preventive
strategies to address the mental health and wellness of first-year college students.
However, with the exception of a few studies, notably from China, there is sparse evidence of
the psychological or mental health effects of the current pandemic on college students, who are
known to be a vulnerable population. Although the findings from these studies thus far
converge on the uptick of mental health issues among college students, the contributing factors
may not necessarily be generalizable to populations in other countries. As highlighted in
multiple recent correspondences, there is an urgent need to assess the effects of the current
pandemic on the mental health and wellness of college students. The aim of this study is to
identify major stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and to understand their
effects on college students’ mental health and wellness.
Statement of the Problem
This study will determine the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on college students’ mental
health and wellness in JH Cerilles State College - Main Campus for the school year, 2020-
2021.
Research Locale and Respondents
The study will be conducted at JH Cerilles State College - Main Campus, Mati, San Miguel
Zamboanga del Sur. It will target a minimum of 500 participants from education students.
Literature Review
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China, in December
2019.1 By January 20, 2020 the first confirmed case was identified in the United States in
Washington State, and the first death was reported on February 29. By early March, most
states had identified cases, and by mid-March statewide school closures and stay-at-home
orders were announced in many states. The rapid pandemic progression and the associated
mitigation strategies up-ended millions of lives within weeks of the virus arriving in the United
States. Early data from China suggest that the outbreak, as well as unprecedented government
response, have had a profound psychological impact on the general public. Many university
and college students were displaced from their dormitories and peer groups, required to leave
campus immediately—in many cases, without their belongings— and expected to continue
their academic work as usual, remotely. The aim of the analysis is to understand the effects of
the pandemic and the resulting mitigation strategies on the emotional health and wellness of
university students. There are a number of additional reasons why students in particular may
be at risk. Many undergraduate students faced this disruption without a familiar routine and
support to provide a sense of stability and coherence. More generally, late adolescence is a
period of neuro developmental risk due to a developmental mismatch between mature
subcortical regions (eg, nucleus accumbens, amygdala) associated with reward seeking and the
experience of emotions and still-developing regulatory prefrontal cortical regions. This
mismatch sets the stage for poorly regulated risk taking and emotional functioning. The risks
are especially salient for college students, most of whom also experience a precipitous
decrease in adult scaffolding and parental supervision and support. Not surprisingly, Cao et al.
demonstrated that nearly one-fourth (24.9%) of college students were found to be experiencing
anxiety due to the COVID outbreak in China. Gender did not significantly impact COVID-
related anxiety; however, living with parents, and having a steady family income, were
protective against anxiety. Although only 0.55% of the sample had an acquaintance or relative
infected with COVID, this personal connection was significantly predictive of the level of
student anxiety. The speed with which the pandemic has developed, the extent of the
governmental and educational mitigation strategies, and the ongoing nature of the threat make
this a unique experience. These events are collective, disruptive, and may pose an ongoing
threat to safety. Commonly observed effects of such experiences include anxiety, depression,
and stress,10-12 but also low academic motivation. The perceived level of personal disruption
of the event was closely tied to worse psychological outcomes. It is not at all clear whether
students’ responses to COVID will follow a pattern similar to that observed with natural
disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Furthermore, most studies of responses to collective
events have information only on the students’ responses after the events, and thus are limited
in their ability to inform how much functioning has changed from before the event. We found
only 1 such study that had information on students from before the disaster, in which the
investigators found that posttraumatic stress related symptoms significantly increased after an
earthquake and continued to remain significantly elevated at 7 weeks after the earthquake. To
disentangle the effects of the event from the individual risk requires an experimental design in
which individuals were sampled before the events. In JHCSC, the president of the State
College of JHCSC announced that the school would be shifting to remote learning indefinitely
as of the year 2019, and a stay-at-home order was instituted for the state by Governor Yu.
These announcements also occurred in the midst of an ongoing study of student emotional
health and wellness. This provided a natural experiment with which to understand the effects
of COVID and associated mitigation strategies on changes in individual emotional health and
wellness behaviors. It was hypothesized that the onset of COVID and associated residential
and educational disruptions would be associated with decreased emotional health and lower
levels of wellness behavior.
Conceptual Framework
COVID-19
Pandemic
Mental Health Wellness
Emotional Environmental
Wellness
Psychological
Spiritual
Social Wellness
Physical
Wellness
Intervention
Theoretical Framework
COVID-19 Pandemic
Mental Health Wellness
Student’s Everymind
Educational Performance
Psychological,
Behavioral and
Physiological
Proposed Methods and Procedures
The primary data was collected via an online questionnaire as the face-to-face interview had to
be avoided due to ongoing lockdown. To evaluate the level of anxiety among the college
students throughout the height of COVID-19, an exploratory study using a cross-sectional
online survey was conducted. A survey invitation through Google Forms was sent to students
via messenger or gmail with periodic reminders. Participation in the survey was voluntary and
the students’ consents were obtained prior to the start of the survey. The participants were
assured regarding the confidentiality of their responses. The research instruments used in this
study included basic demographics; gender, age, field of study, level of study, year of study,
nationality, ethnicity, current mode of study (virtual or online), and students’ living conditions.
Considering the Wellness Wheel (Carter & Andersen, 2019), we constructed a survey
including questions on students’ physical, emotional, social, spiritual, financial, environmental
and academic experiences (e.g., living conditions, discomfort during the lockdown, fear of
infection, and coping strategies). These closed-ended questions were answered on a 3-point
Likert-type scale (almost never, occasionally, nearly every day).
References:
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distress among Chinese people in the COVID-19 epidemic: implications and policy
recommendations. Gen Psychiatry. 2020;33:e100213.
3. Tian F, Li H, Tian S, Yang J, Shao J, Tian C. Psychological symptoms of ordinary Chinese
citizens based on SCL-90 during the level I emergency response to COVID-19. Psychiatry
Res. 2020;112992.
4. Kaiser CF, Sattler DN, Bellack DR, Dersin J. A conservation of resources approach to a
natural disaster: sense of coherence and psychological distress. J Soc Behav Personal.
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8. Akhter, N. (2013). Relationship between internet addiction and academic perforformance
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9. Alagmgir, K, Sami, U.K., Salahuddin, K. Syed, Z. Naimatullah, K.R & Manzoor, L. (2018).
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Nutrition, 1(1), 17-20.
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[FREE Full text] [doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112934] [Medline: 32229390]
