Mental health during the Covid-19 quarantine

The 13^th of March 2020 marked an important date in the history of humankind. It will always be remembered as the day the world isolated itself. Many people had to leave their jobs, schools were closed, but they still somehow managed to work online. For us students it was an interesting transition from the busy days of going to lectures and tutorials then going to libraries to study, hanging out with friends without any fear, and being free to go out without any guilt crawling from the back of your head and it changed to a new reality. This new reality consisted of only staying inside, your laptop being your best friend, online classes, and the pressure from social media to spend your time well.

People did use this time, which was a blessing in a curse, to better themselves, to work on their lifestyle, to set new goals for themselves, getting into new hobbies or returning to their old habits that they did not have time to do before. However, with everyone posting on their social media about how they were spending their time by doing exercises, reading, or just taking some time out of their day for themselves it created the feeling that there was some kind of competition of how time should be spent, and although many people did gain from this “free” time, there were many cases where people only lost what they had worked on so hard to achieve, starting from their dreams to their mental health.

With the focus being mostly on students, as one myself, I can say that the quarantine had a lot of impact on our everyday life, and I am not talking only about the fact that the lectures and tutorials were held online, but the way we live and socialise was now only through a screen. The way we studied and learned, held onto our relationships with friends and professors, and the way we dealt with ourselves changed a lot. It became a habit of most students that after lectures and finishing homework, we would scroll through social media as a way of socialising. Perhaps we were with our families now, but most of us felt alone and alienated, even though everyone was going through the same thing.

With the months passing by it became a lot to carry, from one lecture to another, spending an hour and a half sitting in one place, sometimes we had two or three lectures without breaks, and we had homework for every class, leaving us with a little free time. Considering the fact that every single one of us had a unique experience during quarantine, it is understandable to say that time management and dealing with our mental health was not our strongest forte.

Time was our biggest concern, when we were having lectures at the university, we spent more time getting ready and going from the place we lived to the university, while at home we spent less than a minute to join lectures. We had more time, but at the same time more commitments, more assignments, more to do and to think about. Everything was interesting at the beginning, it even felt like a fresh start of the new semester, but with time it became harder and harder to keep up with the new way of living.

Mental health was and continues to be a huge concern for everyone. It feels like it is still an unspoken topic in our country. So, in a way we felt like we did not have anyone to understand what we were going through. Our lives started to become monotonous. Every day we woke up, sometimes a few minutes before a lecture started, finished our classes, did our homework and research for our assignments, preparing for exams, etc. While it might not have been anything out of the ordinary life of a student, when a deadly virus, internet, and electricity issues, family problems, friendship problems and personal problems are added to the mix then it makes life a bit harder than it already was. It increased the feelings of anxiety, stress, depression, and pressure to do good and achieve what we put to the side, things we wanted to “achieve when we had the time”.

Most of us were on the crossing bridge between teenage hood and adulthood, and we were experiencing a lot of new things, understanding new things about ourselves, changing what we do not like and fixing what we think might be wrong, and during this time quarantine made a bigger mess in our lives. We had a lot in our shoulders, and it felt like things kept adding up, but nothing changed for good. It went to the point where the cup was full, although it is normal to feel this way, the concept of normal changed for us.

When dealing with mental health and mental stability we first have to understand that every individual is different from the other, we have things in common but still we all are a person of our own kind. We have extroverts who were used to going out and experiencing new things outside, who were feeling like being locked up inside their homes. On the other hand, there were introverts who were used to being inside and the comfort their safe zone brings, but it impacted them as well.

We students felt lost and stuck when the online learning during the quarantine began. We and our teachers were facing many problems such as internet connection was poor due to many devices being connected to it, many students who had siblings had to share their devices with them, electricity issues and the overall stress of dealing with this situation. Although it became easier to be a student by learning from the comfort of our home, the constant feeling of anxiety was present during presentations and lectures, leaving us to wonder if there will be problems with the internet or electricity.

When it came to personal relationships with family and friends there were many new areas to explore. We had to adapt to the new way of living and to improvise ways of socialising. But at some point, people were drained by trying to maintain everything as if the virus never existed, instead of making peace with the fact that things changed and are not coming back to how they were. We were closer to our families, but we felt the distance between us and our friends and other loved ones. When it comes to any type of relationship sacrifices must be made, even if those sacrifices do not cost a lot. For someone it meant losing hours of sleep, for someone it means less time for something they loved doing, but at the end of the day humans are social beings, and that is why we need others in our lives. We might have felt alone with our thoughts and feelings, but it is a comforting feeling knowing that we were not alone. Thanks to social media we were together even if we were miles away.

The best advice I have been told during this quarantine is that “Life moves on even if you don’t”, so we have to be stronger for ourselves even if we cannot see or feel the progress. We must understand that hope is the one thing we must never lose, even if the path towards us looks dark, even if we are or feel alone. We should have a better understanding of ourselves, because by doing so we understand that the grass is not greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you water it. We should not compare ourselves with other people because we never see the progress, we never see the sacrifices that are done. Everyone has their own time and just because we think something is good for us, it does not necessarily mean that it is the right thing for us.