A Survey on the Emotional and Psychological Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown
Towards Members of Adolescents in the Household Families
The Psychology Department College of Arts
and Sciences University of the East – Manila
In APY 2202 – Physiological Psychology
By: Uy, Bryan Gunther T.
Date of Submission: November 16, 2022
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and
presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems, and the world of
work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens
of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty, while the number of
undernourished people, currently estimated at nearly 690 million, could increase by up
to 132 million by the end of the year (Chriscaden, 2020). Thus, COVID-19 greatly
affects many adolescents in terms of their emotional and psychological behavior. As
such, the coronavirus's devasted effect also brings forth numerous implements of
lockdown or quarantine worldwide. The implementation of community quarantine was
for the people to avoid personal contact with each other’s, so that, will not lead to high
cases of infection rates.
On the other hand, due to the rise and effect of the highly contagious virus, it
develops more negative emotional behavior in adolescents than before the pandemic.
According to (Cao et al., 2020), for the students who were distant from their peers and
were experiencing life in lockdown, the anxiety level has shown a gradual increase as
this psychological disorder is more likely to occur and worsen in the absence of
interpersonal communication. As such, we could definitely see that negative emotion
has been gradually increasing in the span of the COVID-19 lockdown for the majority of
adolescents.
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
Emotions Brought to the Members of the Adolescents in
the Household Family
6%
8%
35%
16%
16%
19%
Fear, uncertainty, and worry
Anxiety, and stress
Boredom, loneliness, sadness, and unmotivated
Calmness, happiness, and relief
Panic, and Shock
Others: overwhelemed, tiredness, confidence, and emotional breakdown
Figure 1
The result shows several factors of emotion that are evident among the
adolescent respondents during the timespan of their lockdown as a result of the active
pandemic. Based on the 14 respondents, the majority of them felt a surge of emotions
that includes uncertainty, worry, and especially fear during the lockdown phase of the
pandemic, which had a total of 35%. The article of (Arato et al., 2020) stated that the
factors include insufficient communication, lack of (and also erratic) information,
inadequate protective equipment, fear of the unknown and uncertainty, concern about
infection leading to self-isolation and thus, vulnerability to stress, anxiety, depression,
insomnia, and fear. Which is the possibility why the data shows a high level of
percentage among adolescents related to the matter of fear, worry, and uncertainty for it
is a primary foundation of emotional factors that leads to further more implication on our
own emotional state. This brings us to 19% of the respondent anxiety, and stress as
their secondary emotions. Meanwhile, 16% of the respondents have experience
boredom, loneliness, sadness, and unmotivated. Furthermore, in the given data, there is
another percentage of 16% that relates to positive emotions such as calmness,
happiness, and relief.
The result also shows that 8% of the respondents have received a backlash of
emotions such as panic, and shock. Lastly, 6% of the respondents give their ‘other’
emotions that were not on the list of the surveys such as being overwhelmed, tiredness,
confidence, and emotional breakdown, in which most of them are leaning towards the
negative side of emotions during the lockdown.
Coping Mechanism Utilized by the Adolescent Re-
spondents
15% 10%
20%
30%
5%
20%
Doing prodcutive things
Doing hobbies
Watching entertainments
Talking to other people (Family or friends in the online platform)
Praying
Sleeping, and eating
Figure 3
In regards to the participants of their coping mechanisms, the data shows
indicate that 30% utilized by the adolescents was to pray, for the majority of the
respondent are Christians and firmly believes in God. While the rest of the data
gathered showed that 20% of the participants rather to their hobbies such as listening to
music and playing online games. At the same time, the other 20% of the participants
prefer to communicate with other people through various means like social platforms, so
that, they will not feel sad or to be lonely by being alone.
Moreover, 15% of the participants rather choose to rest and eat food to ease
their emotions. Among the data shown, we could see that 10% of them rather choose
productive things to do, such as: doing house chores, learning to play instruments, and
doing art. Lastly, the remaining 5% of the data given by the respondent shows that
watching such as anime or Netflix can soothe out there disturb emotions as a form of
coping method.
Conclusion
The study determined that majority of the adolescents are mostly affected by
negative emotions due to the effect mainly of fear, worry, and uncertainty brought by
COVID-19, and its lockdown protocol. However, even in the midst of the chaotic
pandemic, some people find enlightenment and relief in a form of positive emotions.
Given the fact, there are some factors in the participants in the survey experience
COVID-19 and lockdown not in the Philippines but rather in other countries due to some
circumstance that they need to stay there with their “Overseas Filipino Worker” parent,
like in the country of Taiwan, and Hongkong where they received different situational
outcome during the pandemic.
More so, the participants of adolescents in the survey have their own ways of
coping mechanisms under the circumstance of the pandemic. Some adaptive ways that
are used are productivity, sleeping, eating, communicating on social media, watching
some entertainment, doing some hobbies, and also other productive things that can be
done during the lockdown which the respondents find effective methods to combat
instability of emotions.
Furthermore, among the participant, most of them are religious because they
have strong faith in God. During the crisis of coronavirus, as we know almost all outside
activities and especially going to church are not allowed. On top of that due to not going
to church, they believe that they are having a hard time adjusting due to becoming
spiritually weak which triggers their other emotion to be haywire with no guidance or
help from their fellow church brothers and sister in Christ. But after some time thankfully
their church adopted a social platform to stream the church service which truly help
them to stabilize their own emotions. Not only, during the lockdown, but they have also
experienced that their praying habit increased than before, for they said that this is a
form of their sense of relief in times of troubles.
In conclusion, the members of the adolescent in the household family shows
that they are resilient and they have ways to overcome even in an awful situation like
COVID-19. They also explore other ways to cope-up and to find ways to fight against
emotional instability. Yet the limitation of this study is that there is only one researcher,
a limited quantity of respondents, and also based on the researcher's family household.
Though this study proposes insight for further research in the near future. In such a way
it will be used as a guide to other researchers.
References:
Arato, N., Coelho, M. C., Suttiwan, P., Zsido, A. N. (2020). On the Nature of Fear and
Anxiety Triggered by COVID-19. Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings. Retrieved
from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.581314
Cao, W., Dong, J., Fang, Z., Han, M., Hou, G., Xu, X., & Zheng, J. (2020). The
psychological impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on college students in China. SI:
Special Articles on Mental Health and Covid-19. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112934
Chriscaden, K. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our
food systems. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news/item/13-10-2020-impact-
of-covid-19-on-people's-livelihoods-their-health-and-our-food-
systems#:~:text=The%20economic%20and%20social%20disruption,the%20end
%20of%20the%20year.
