Essay: The Impact of COVID-19 on College Students’; Stress and Anxiety Levels

Feelings of stress and anxiety have become a part of everyday life of an individual. The National Institute for Mental Health (2016) states that stress is how the brain and body respond to any demand. On the other hand, anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure as defined by the American Psychological Association. Individuals suffering from anxiety may feel restless, on edge, and irritable. They may have difficulty concentrating or controlling their emotions. Physical symptoms can also include fatigue, trembling, trouble sleeping, stomach aches, headaches, and muscle tension. (Psychology Today, 2020) For most people, stress is viewed as negative concept however; various levels of stress can give benefit for a person as a result of growth of well-being and motivation. A little amount of stress and anxiety can actually be a good motivator that gives us encouragement to meet the challenges and results in increased productivity. However, when excessive stress and anxiety occurs for an extended period of time it can wear down the body and lead to variety of physical and emotional issues that can affect a person’s performance in everyday life. For college students, stress comes in different forms. They face with a variety of stressors which includes academics, finances, personal relationship, events in life and others. Being overwhelmed in stress and anxiety may lead to debilitating effect which can interfere with their academic performance and everyday task.
The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. In the Philippines, both national and local government are doing their collaborative effort to minimize the spread of the viral disease. On March 15, 2020 President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a “lockdown” of the entire metro Manila region from March 15 to April 14 due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Baloran, 2020) As the COVID-19 pandemic arises, it brought many changes on how people will live their life. The stress-related problems that have been brought by the Covid-19 pandemic had escalated and the damaged it made physically, economically, emotionally and mentally were clearly seen in all parts of the globe. The thoughts of how long the pandemic will last, the fear of acquiring the virus and what the future will bring causes the people to be more anxious and stressed. The emergence and spread of the virus has created a lot of concerns for people leading to increased level of anxiety. (Roy et. al, 2020) The COVID-19 has also made an impact on the context of Philippine education that resulted to postponed classes and stricter lockdowns and health protocol concerns. The majority of colleges and universities also faced the current challenges with virtual learning. (Talidong et. al, 2020) There is evidence of widespread emotional distress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A data from China suggests that 25% of the general population have experienced moderate to severe levels of anxiety or stress-related symptoms in response to COVID-19 (Wang et. al, 2020). Addition to that, there is a recent Kaiser Health Foundation survey conducted in mid-April of 2020 found that 56th of US adults reported worry and stress around Covid-19 had caused them to experience a mental health related problem. (Stempel et. al, 2020) The Novel Corona Virus has significantly made a huge impact in the student’s mental health; the coping mechanisms that the students are using when they are stress-out and dealing with mental issues like anxiety are still considered as a heated-debate by both non-medical and medical researchers.
Coping with stress and anxiety is an important factor for human survival. Coping is defined as the thoughts and behaviors mobilized to manage the internal and external stressful situations. It is used distinctively for conscious and voluntary mobilization of acts that are subconscious or unconscious adaptive responses which are to reduce or tolerate stress. (Algorani et. al, 2020) There are hundreds of coping strategies that are known today with different classifications and approach, but the common coping strategies are the problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. According to Legg (2020), problem-focused coping involves handling stress by facing and taking action to resolve the underlying cause, on the other hand, emotion-focused coping involves regulating your feelings and emotional response to the problem instead of addressing the problem. Many of the coping mechanisms are useful in certain situations and a typical person will engage a mixture of different strategies when attempting to cope with stress. Coping strategies vary from every person due to different life experiences, perceptions and personality. The benefits provided by coping mechanism are maximized if the individual employs problem-focused coping mechanism (e.g., planning and seeking instrumental support) or emotion-focused approaches (e.g., positive reappraisal and seeking emotional support) based on the alleged controllability of the stressor facing them (Sitanen et. al, 2019). The actual classification of coping mechanism as responses to a specific challenge demonstrates their situational specificity. This has led in recent years to the adoption of a method based on the flexibility of coping under the possibility that a single individual can combine different approaches; using one or the other depending on the specific situation that a person is facing. (Kobylinska et. al, 2019) Furthermore, positive (adaptive) and negative (maladaptive) coping approaches were defined based on whether a person’s response is directed towards the stressor or away from it. Positive or adaptive coping strategies decrease amount of stress perceived and experienced. Relaxation, meditation, engaging to physical wellness and having a support system such as your family, friends or a therapist to talk to are some of the examples of positive coping strategies. (Chowdhury, 2020) Negative or maladaptive strategies diminish symptoms of stress without addressing the real problem; some examples of this approach are escape and avoidance, unhealthy comfort zone and emotional numbing. (Chowdhury, 2020) However, the main objective of coping is to reduce stress and have a balanced state of functioning.
Hence, this study is conducted to know the relationship between the levels of coping mechanisms to the demographic profile of the respondents and to evaluate the stress-coping approach used by the students to reduce stress.