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ASSIGNMENT COVER PAGE

No. Student’s Name Registration Number

1. Sulav Bista 1919016

Lecturer Name : Manjila Pokharel

Programme Title : Bachelor (Hons) of Business Administration

Subject Code & Title : Psychology (BBA 3763)

Semester : Fourth Semester

Assignment Topic : Case Assessment (20%)

SUBMISSION DATE : 27th Feb 2022

Abstract:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a respiratory illness caused by a new virus. It was first identified in
Wuhan province of China in December of 2019. Fear of getting infected and strict lockdown led
to several mental consequences such as depression, stress and anxiety. Since mid-March 2020,
1,350 people have died by suicide in China from Covid-19 pandemic. People are suffering from
financial crisis, hunger, quarantine stay, boredom due to never ending lockdown. COVID-19 has
affected all of us, no matter how old we are. The yearly increase in the suicide rate from 2019 to
2020 is 16%. Males having higher suicide rate (26.9 per 100,000) than females (16.5 per 100,.000).
Recreational Internet use had also significantly increased during the pandemic, and almost half of
participants reported increases in the severity of Internet addiction. Since mid-March 2020, 1,350
people have died by suicide, overwhelmed by the emotional and mental toll of months of
uncertainty.

People who are not susceptible to experiencing negative emotional states expect to cope well.
Introverted persons accept responsibility for the situation and trust themselves and experience less
stress. Openness is another personality trait that can affect how stress is dealt with by an individual.
Perception involves past experience causing the stress to differ from person to person. Gender
differences and age differences in coping with stress were also present in the findings. Internet
Addiction in general population is due to increased dependency on reliance on internet for all our
jobs. Internet and its web applications have also created a substitute for real world interactions and
activities. Some experts have suggested that some people are predisposed to addictive behaviors
because they don't have enough dopamine receptors.

Keywords: COVID Lockdowns, Emotion, Personality, Suicide, Mental Health, Subjective

Experience, Gender Difference, Perception, Age Difference, Internet Addiction
Introduction

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a respiratory illness caused by a new virus. It was first identified in
Wuhan province of China in December of 2019. It is said that the virus spread in the wet markets
of Wuhan which sells different species of animals both dead and alive. The virus had the ability to
quickly transfer from one person to another thus spreading in multiple countries in a matter of
weeks resulting in an ongoing pandemic. It changed many things for many people irrespective of
their age, sex, gender and their social status. In order to decrease the spread of the virus
governments all over the globe imposed strict lockdowns. After people were forced to stay in
confinement their mental health started deteriorating.

Social connection is vital to well-being in human. The initiation of social distancing, self-isolation
and lockdowns limits face-to-face social contact with others; a model of interaction known to
reduce the risk of Depressive disorder. It has been predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely
to increase rates of substance use, loneliness, domestic violence and child abuse. Depression is a
prevalent mental disorder that affects over 264 million individuals worldwide and is marked by
continuous sadness and a loss of interest in formerly rewarding or enjoyable activities. In
developing countries, 76–85% of people suffering from mental illnesses do not have access to the
therapy they require (United Nations Development Program, 2020). Several studies conducted in
China, first affected country from Covid-19 shows that fear of getting infected and strict lockdown
measures led to several mental consequences such as depression, stress and anxiety. According to
the evidence, symptoms of anxiety and depression (16–28%) and self-reported stress (8%) are
common psychological reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic (Rajkumar, 2020). As reports of
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (2020), given the country's previously
high suicide rates, the pandemic has aggravated the problem.

Since mid-March 2020, 1,350 people have died by suicide, which was overwhelmed by the
emotional and mental toll of months of uncertainty, which was sometimes worsened by trauma
and losses. With the prolonged period of lockdown, people are suffering from fear and stress of
getting infected, on the other hand, people are suffering from financial crisis, hunger, unfacilitated
quarantine stay, boredom due to never ending lockdown (Asmundson & Taylor, 2020).As a result
of rapidly spreading global pandemic general population were experiencing increased level of
stress and anxiety. Residents are confined to their homes as a result of the lockdown, which has
negative mental health consequences such as anxiety and uncertainty about the future. The impact
of such occurrences on mental health can occur immediately afterwards and then last for a long
time. (Basnet & Bhandari, 2021)

Methodology:

Archival Research was conducted for the completion of this study. I investigated existing data to
see the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on overall mental wellbeing, coping and stress based on
gender and age differences, personality, perception, emotion and its impact on stress, as well as
internet addiction and its prevention. The data presented here are solely from secondary sources
which I obtained from Google Scholar, Ministry of Health, National Newspapers and other
scientific journals. I studied number of these research articles, interviews of scholars and news
articles to successfully complete the assignment and reach to the conclusion listed below.
Results:

COVID-19 has affected all of us, no matter how old we are. A health tracking poll from July 2020
found that many adults are reporting specific negative impacts on their mental health and well-
being, such as difficulty sleeping (36%) or eating (32%), increases in alcohol consumption or
substance use (12%), and worsening chronic conditions (12%), due to worry and stress over the
coronavirus.(Hamel, 2020). Such increase rates of substance use, loneliness will increase cases of
domestic violence and child abuse. The yearly increase in the suicide rate from 2019 to 2020 is
16%, which is more than threefold higher than a yearly increase in the suicide rate from 2018 to
2019 (5%) in Nepal. All the pandemic months except April and May of 2020 and February and
March of 2021 had a significantly higher suicide rate compared to the same months in 2019. In
comparison to the same month in 2019, July 2020 (just after the first lockdown) had the highest
increase in the suicide rate with an increment of 55%. (Awale, 2022). Stress was more common
in people over 45 years old, females, and those with a post-secondary education. Similarly, in this
study there was significant difference between depression with age and sex. Also, there was
significant difference between stress with age, sex and education level (Shrestha et.al., 2020). The
result followed by moderately depressed and anxious respondents during Covid-19 lockdown
where young adults were more psychologically affected than older adults. Likewise, male were
more affected than female. Males had a higher suicide rate (26.9 per 100,000) than females (16.5
per 100,000), but suicide rates went down over the last two years among males, but was sustained
for a longer duration among females.

The study about internet addiction revealed among the 144 students mean age was 15.52 ±1.17,
two third 60.7% were from 16-20 years of age, 61.1 % were male, more than half 51.1% were
from grade nine and starting mean age of the respondents was 11.78 ±2.4.Majority 85.4 % were
using internet from more than one year,43.8% were spending one to two hour with internet
users,65.3% of the respondents were using internet for recreation purpose, all most respondents
96.5 were using in-ternet in home,74.23% were using internet in mobile, starting mean age was
11.78±2.4.More than half 51.2% of the respondents had moderate to severe level of Internet
addiction. recreational Internet use had significantly increased during the pandemic, and almost
half of participants reported increases in the severity of Internet addiction. (Singh & Shrestha,
2021).
Source: JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (JAAR)

Source: National Mental Health Survey, Nepal-2020

Source: National Mental Health Survey, Nepal-2020

Source: Nepali Times

Source: Nepali Times
 Source: ChildsafeNet

Discussion:

Children and Adults react differently; The lack of routine is probably one of the biggest factors
that affects children. For example: getting up at early, kindergarten/school from 10 am to 3 pm,
meeting friends, having dinner, going to bed at 8 pm these activities give children structure and a
framework they can rely on, which is very important. Routine and structure give them a feeling of
safety and comfort. Another big thing is the loss of social contact. To accept the recommended
and necessary barriers is difficult for us adults and probably much more difficult for our little ones.
Like with everyone, not every child reacts the same way. Like adults, children also have different
personalities and levels of resilience, which affects their wellbeing. Some children might develop
higher levels of stress, feeling restless or grumpy. Some might develop anxiety and become
irritable, aggressive or scared. Depending on how long the situation lasts, feelings of sadness or
depression could appear, which could lead to social withdrawal or crying. Many parents are having
a harder time dealing with COVID-19 than their children, and some of the anxiety that kids are
experiencing may be inadvertently passed on by worried parents. (Kaspar, 2020).
Adults are shown to be more impacted and the reason to that can be increase in responsibilities.
The reason for that can be children are only abstained from social contact with increased freedom
in their home but, adults are faced with an increase in overall expectations and encroachment of
their rights for example: many adults working from home had no fix schedule, were only provided
certain percent of their salary, violation of privacy, etc. and when we combine these with personal
responsibilities to keep their child safe, fear of loosing the job so they had to agree with
unreasonable demands of employers, financial difficulties, maintaining healthy relationships, etc.
so, when their personal responsibilities increases they resorted towards addictions and other vices.

All these feelings can also display in physical reactions including stomachaches, headaches, or
loss of appetite. These physical reactions arise because the mental processes are closely related
with the body. The Biological Basis of Behavior explores biological, psychological, computational
and clinical approaches to understand the nervous system as the biological basis of behavior, as
well as perception, memory, motivation, and emotion. Behavior exhibited by a person is based on
the various stimuli presented in the external environment and lying within our body. For example:
the sympathetic division in the nervous system acts to prepare body in stressful, emergency
situation. So, whenever we get stressed out our sympathetic division is at work also, the para-
sympathetic division acts to calm us down. So, our biological makeup can also impact how we
deal with stress, coping and the emotions we experience.

Personality and stress; personal traits are different in every one and they can determine how we
cope with stress and our behavior. Emotional stability of a person can determine their coping
mechanism. People who are not susceptible to experiencing negative emotional states expect to
cope well. The reason for this might be the fact that lack of negative emotions is related to an
increase in adaptability to the environment. Contrary to neurotic persons, emotionally stable
individuals recognize the value of available resources adequate to cope with stress. Openness is
another personality trait, Persons with high openness are substantially open to experience are
characterized by cognitive curiosity, tolerance for novelty, and willingness to gather new
experiences for this reason, they rarely assess a new situation as stressful and thus, can deal with
COVID-19 stress better than people who do not possess this trait. Introversion; introverted persons
accept responsibility for the situation and trust themselves and their own abilities to cope well,
without seeking support from their co-workers. This is significant because in COVID Lockdown,
contact with co-workers may be naturally limited. Thus, these are some elements that portray how
personality and stress coping is related.

Emotions are fundamental to human life. There are four kinds of basic emotions: happiness,
sadness, fear, and anger, which are differentially associated with three core affects: reward
(happiness), punishment (sadness), and stress (fear and anger). (Gu et al., 2001). Emotions
generally are made up of three parts: subjective experiences, physiological responses and
behavioral responses. subjective experiences are produced by the individual mind thus, these
experiences can affect how stress is dealt with by an individual. Processing and coping with
stressful situations requires the engagement of complex mechanisms that integrate brain and body.
The response to stressful stimuli is articulated by a wide diversity of brain structures that
collectively are able to detect or interpret events as either real or potential threats. The perception
of these events as stressors involves different networks depending whether it is a physical or
psychological stressor like the COVID lockdowns. (Godoy et al., 2001)

Perception and stress; Perception is a selective process. Perception involves past experience:
every person doesn’t go through same circumstances and life experience so past experience to the
same event might also be different thus, even when every individual in the world is experiencing
COVID lockdowns their perception to that event is not the same thus, the stress level experienced
by them is different and varies form person to person. This notable difference in perception makes
an impact in coping with tress. So, this is how these factors affect us in dealing with the pandemic
and everybody’s experience of the same pandemic can be wildly different.

Gender differences in dealing with stress were present in the findings. There were significant
differences between males and females concerning their reactions to stress. Overall, more females
experienced higher levels of depression, frustration, and anxiety than their male counterparts when
reacting to stress. Males also tended to have other psychological reactions i.e. more active in
response to stress (Calvarese, 2015). Where more cases of suicides were seen in men and the intent
to commit suicide have seen to be stronger in men than in women. One key element is
communication. It’s too simplistic to say women are willing to share their problems and men tend
to bottle them up. But it is true that, for generations, many societies have encouraged men to be
“strong” and not admit they’re struggling. It often starts in childhood. We tell boys that 'boys don't
cry',”. The lack of commination and pride can lead a depressed man to an early grave.
Effectiveness of Lockdowns to stop the spread cannot be debated but they also impacted the
mental health. It can be seen form the findings that suicide rates doubled, even tripled in certain
cases during the initial lockdowns but it is just one factor. The mental health of adults was impacted
by many variables i.e. lack of social contact, unemployment, job security, financial difficulties,
etc. Although these are lockdown induced problems, they happened because people were unable
to adapt to a different scenario, we can see from the above table of comparison between COVID
deaths and suicide death table that initially the suicide cases were high but during the second phase
(2021) they seem to have decreased. So, it has seen that although lockdown has prevented deaths
it was ineffective to ensure overall safety and the impacts of this can be seen even in the days to
come.

Internet Addiction in general population is due to our increased dependency on reliance on

internet for all our jobs. It can be seen from the above table and data that internet use (for more
than four hours) has increased and this increased time on the internet is on recreational activities.
Some experts have suggested that some people are predisposed to addictive behaviors because
they don’t have enough dopamine receptors, or they aren’t making the right balance of serotonin
with dopamine. Internet and its web applications have also created a substitute for real world
interactions and activities and that is also a leading cause of why many young people and people
who experience social disorders have internet addiction.

Some viable methods to treat Internet addictions are:

1. Behavior modification: A formalized technique for promoting the frequency of desirable

behaviors and decreasing the incidence of unwanted ones
2. Cognitive–behavioral approaches: is a potentially effective treatments for internet
addictions as clinical recommendations are not possible due to the lack of studies.
3. Interventions with family members or other relatives could be useful, encouraging
socializing.
4. Use of positive reinforcement to make progress towards decreasing internet use.

So, these are some of the possible ways to treat internet addiction.
References:

Kaspar, E. (2020, March 30). How does covid-19 affect children? A child psychologist weighs in.
SOS Children's Villages. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.sos-
childrensvillages.org/news/covid19-child-psychologist-interview

Hamel, L (2020, August 14). KFF Health Tracking Poll – july 2020. KFF. Retrieved February
28, 2022, from https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/report/kff-health-tracking-poll-july-
2020/

Singh, S., & Shrestha, S. (2021). Internet Addiction among Students of Selected Schools of
Pokhara, Nepal, Vol. 11 (No. 1 ).
https://doi.org/https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JCMC/article/view/36047#:~:text=More%20th
an%20half%2051.2%25%20of,severe%20level%20of%20Internet%20addiction.

Basnet, S., & Bhandari, B. (2021). Depression, Stress and Anxiety among Residents of Nepal
during COVID-19 Lockdown. JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (JAAR),
8(2362-1311).

Calvarese, M. (2015). The Effect of Gender on Stress Factors: An Exploratory Study among
University Students. Social Sciences, 4(4), 1177–1184. MDPI AG. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/socsci4041177

Godoy, L. D., Rossignoli, M. T., Delfino-Pereira, P., Garcia-Cairasco, N., & de Lima Umeoka,
E. H. (1AD, January 1). A comprehensive overview on stress neurobiology: Basic concepts and
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Gu, S., Wang, F., Patel, N. P., Bourgeois, J. A., & Huang, J. H. (2001, January 1). A model for
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