The Mental Health Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic in College Students

During the year 2019, the entire world was faced with a new invisible threat that changed life in just a few short months. This invisible threat became known to be as COVID-19, an infectious disease caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. COVID had started in Wuhan, China as an epidemic within the community, but quickly spread to other countries, and soon enough America was in a nationwide pandemic. A pandemic is an outbreak of a contagious disease that spreads across a large region or worldwide. COVID-19 is characterized as an acute respiratory illness that can cause a range of symptoms, such as a fever, runny nose, nausea, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, and in severe cases, death (Down et al., 2020) With such a new illness surfacing causing devasting loss of life, America went into a lockdown where loneliness and social isolation became so common in essentially everyone. One major population that took a toll on the pandemic were college students. By March of 2020, universities shut down entirely and sent students home to resume learning from online virtual classes because of the high-risk environment campuses are for COVID-19 transmission. It has been found that there is a significant correlation between the negative mental health impacts with college students in isolation, such as depression and anxiety due to the physical and social inactivity as well as major lifestyle changes such as unemployment, home confinement, and overstimulation from technology (Ammar et al., 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant negative repercussions to the mental health of college aged students nationwide due to added stressors while being in lockdown, such as housing issues, loss of loved ones, financial hardships, social isolation, and excessive technological device use