1  The impact of COVID-19 on collegiate mental health
Many universities decided to suspend in-person classes and evacuate students in responding to the intensifying concerns surrounding COVID-19. This action can lead to negative psychological consequences among college students. For example, college students often experience compounded negative emotions during the school “closure” (Van Bortel et al., 2016). Some students who find the campus homelike and welcoming harbor intense feelings such as frustration, anxiety, and betrayal. Some may struggle with loneliness and isolation while sheltering in place because of disconnections from friends and partners. For those who receive counseling services on campus, they can no longer access counseling services, which exacerbates their psychological symptoms and increase some students’ risk for suicide and substance abuse.
College students experience distress contributed by the uncertainty and abrupt disruption of the semester in addition to the anxiety caused by school closure. As more universities transitioning to remote learning after the spring break, some students suffer from poor mental health due to the disruption of academic routine (Agnew et al., 2019). Many students have to cease their research projects and internships when universities evacuated them from campus. Moreover, disruptions of their research projects and internships jeopardize their program of study, delay their graduation, and undermine their competitiveness on the job market, which in turn fuels anxiety among college students. They may also struggle with the cost of returning home and managing belongings.
Many college students have lost their on-campus jobs due to the evacuation, and the pending issue of room and board fees can aggravate their financial hardship and mental health outcomes. They also have concerns and fears of infection and transmission of COVID-19 to their family members when they return home. Given that youth can be asymptomatic carriers (Pan et al., 2020), students may be worried about putting their elder family members at increased risk for infection with severe complications from COVID-19. The fact that the COVID-19 pandemic affects collegiate mental health only underscores the urgent need to understand these challenges and concerns in order to inform the development of courses of action and public health messaging that will support college students during this difficult time.