The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented stress to young people. Despite recent speculative suggestions of poorer mental health in young people in India since the start of the pandemic, there have been no systematic efforts to measure these. Here we report on the content worries of Indian adolescents and identify groups of young people who may be particularly vulnerable to negative emotions, along with reporting on the impact of coronavirus on their lives. Three-hundred-and-ten young people from North India (51% male, 12–18 years) reported on their personal experiences of being infected by the coronavirus, the impact of the pandemic and its restrictions across life domains, their top worries, social restrictions, and levels of negative affect and Macedonia. Findings showed that most participants had no personal experience (97.41%) or knew anyone (82.58%) with COVID-19, yet endorsed the moderate-to-severe impact of COVID-19 on their academics, social life, and work. These impacts in turn associated with negative affect. Participants' top worries focused on academic attainments, social and recreational activities, and physical health, More females than males are worried about academic attainment and physical health while more males are worried about social and recreational activities. Thus, Indian adolescents report the significant impact of the pandemic on various aspects of their life and are particularly worried about academic attainments, social and recreational activities, and physical health. These findings call for a need to ensure provisions and access to digital education and medical care.
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching consequences on the physical and mental health of individuals, as well as the health of economies across the globe. While young people may be less susceptible to severe forms of the illness, suffering milder symptoms, lower morbidity, and better prognosis compared to adults (1, 2) they have experienced an upsurge in stress (3, 4) precipitating loneliness, anxiety, and depression in many (5–8). As emotional symptoms in adolescence can become associated with many serious mental health outcomes including suicide, long-term physical health consequences, and significant healthcare burden (9–11), the effect of COVID-19 on young people's mental health could be more damaging in the long run than the infection itself (12). Measuring early signs of mental health challenges such as worries and negative emotions in young people is thus an urgent priority for researchers (13, 14) as well as policy-makers, including identifying those most vulnerable to mental health difficulties. While this information is crucial for both high- and low-income countries, countries with lower resources dedicated to mental health may benefit more from early forecasts of these needs. India has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the world, with over 2.5 million confirmed cases and the death toll on the rise (15, 16). The first case of COVID-19 was identified on January 30, 2020, in Kerala (17) in a student who had returned from Wuhan, China (18). However, since March 2020, there has been an upsurge in the spread of the infection. In response, the Government imposed a nationwide lockdown to prevent community transmission of the infection. Despite some regional differences in the extent of lockdown restrictions, based on total COVID-19 cases in that region (18), everyone in India has experienced the closure of educational and training institutions; hotels and restaurants; malls, cinemas, gyms, sports centers; and places of worship. A recent correspondence article by Patron and Patron (19) speculated that school closures in particular may have been especially damaging for young people and highlighted the urgent need to address mental health issues in Indian adolescents. Yet there have been no such systematic efforts to our knowledge. Here, we report new data from a small cohort of young people from India. We describe their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their daily life. We describe the content of the most common worries reported by young people, alongside quantitative measures of current negative and (absence of) positive emotions—symptom markers of common mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression. We then assess which young people (in terms of gender, age, and socioeconomic status) are particularly susceptible to reporting more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions. In India, before the pandemic started, public awareness of mental health in young people had been increasing along with the recognition that such problems can be economically costly (20). Our data can thus signpost emerging, potentially costly mental health problems post-pandemic.
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