A Cross-Sectional Study on Mental Health of School Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic in India

Abstract

The broad objective of the present study is to assess the levels of anxiety and depression of school students during the COVID-19 lockdown phase and their association with students’ background, stress, concerns and social support. In this regard, the present study follows a novel two stage approach. In the first phase, an empirical survey was carried out, based on multivariate statistical analysis, wherein a group of 273 school students participated in the study voluntarily. In the second phase, a novel Picture Fuzzy FFA (PF-FFA) method was applied for understanding the dynamics of facilitating and prohibiting factors for three categories of focus groups (FG), formulated on the basis of attendance in online classes. Findings revealed a significant impact of anxiety and depression on mental health. Further, PF-FFA examinedthe impact of the driving forces that steered children to attend class as contrasted to the the impact of the restricting forces.

Keywords

• school students
• COVID-19
• mental health
• social support
• picture fuzzy force field analysis (PF-FFA)
• level based weight assessment (LBWA)