Psychosocial Problems among Adolescents during COVID 19 lockdown

Abstract

Psychosocial problems refer to the difficulties faced by adolescents in different areas of personal and social functioning. Adolescents are vulnerable to psychosocial problems because of physical and physiological changes that occur in their body during this developmental stage. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify psychosocial problems among school going adolescents in Cuddalore.  A cross-sectional descriptive study was adopted. Nonprobability convenient sampling technique was used for selecting 210 adolescents. Ethical approval was taken from Educational department Council and self-administered structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Data collection was done in 2021. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data results. The findings of this study show that 20 percent of adolescents had psychosocial problems. While categorizing psychosocial problems, the adolescents had internalizing problems (52%), attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) (25.8%), and externalizing problems (4.2%). It is concluded that psychosocial problems (i.e., internalizing problems, ADHD, and externalizing problems) were prevalent among school adolescents. Adolescents’ age group and parent’s marital status are associated with psychosocial problems. This study recommended that school authority, health professionals, and other professional related to child health and mental health should play an important role for the prevention and earlier recognition of and intervention for psychosocial problems.

The study focuses on Middle and High  level school children from the age group of 10- 16 years who are studying from 6 th std to 12 th std. There are nearly 25-30 schools including Government and Private Institution.  So, Through Random Sampling lottery method, the researcher chooses around 3 schools in one block of cuddalore which is a co-educational school to obtain the feasibility of the study.

So, out of 3 schools (School name not revealed for confidentiality purpose), nearly 1680 students are there. For Qualitative study, 10 respondents are chosen through purposive sampling method and for Quantitative study, 200 students are selected through cluster sampling method dividing them according to age and gender.  The study is descriptive and exploratory in nature as it involves both Qualitative and Quantitative analysis. Hypothesis is not obtained as it is a new study implemented from a pandemic crisis. It gives rise to a new kind of study for further analysis in future. As there is no hypothesis, variables are not obtained. May be, Variables like Chikungunya kind of hypothesis can be considered but the severity of COVID 19 lockdown does not exist in those kinds of variables. So, considering variables and hypothesis is unrealistic.

The researcher has found that nearly 88% of the school children are dreaded by this harmful pandemic lockdown. Most of the students feel uncomfortable to be at home all the time as it restricts their ideas, feelings, thoughts and emotions. Nearly 96% of the children convey that the inability to move around, play, interact and learn in a free environment is restricted due to lockdown. Nearly 66% of the children dislike online classes because the actual class at school, the enjoyment between friends in school is absent. Above all, 85% of the students say that the method of teaching, classroom assignments, homework, summative assessments, Cultural programmes, Festive mood implementing through online becomes a burden and lacks interesting at the sight of technology.