Mental health challenges
Mitigating public health measures towards COVID-19 resulted in
widespread mental health issues in individuals working remotely and
having less social interactions with family and friends (2020).
University students are particularly in danger of adverse psychological
impacts during the crisis and in the face of unprecedented uncertainties
regarding their ongoing coursework, research, and graduations. This
resulted in difficulty in coping and increased rate of mental health
issues such as anxiety and depression (Odriozola-Gonzalez,
Planchuelo-Gomez, Irurtia, & de Luis-Garcia, 2020). Therefore,
addressing mental health of the students by developing comprehensive
psychological crisis interventions are recommended (Y. Bao, Sun, Meng,
Shi, & Lu, 2020). Preliminary evidence suggest that higher exposure to
the social media “infodemic” can exacerbate the psychological impact
of COVID-19 (Gao et al., 2020; Zarocostas, 2020) and thus timely and
open communications is required at all levels of university
administration. Self-isolation during the pandemic can compound the
psychological distress of the students. A secondary school principal in
China has opted to be optimistic and while shutting down the school to
stop spreading SARS-CoV-2, worked hard to spread smiles (Leland, 2020).
University presidents and faculty deans have intuitively adopted this
compassionate strategy across the globe. Although, professors seem to
experience lower rates of negative physiological impacts due to COVID-19
(Odriozola-Gonzalez et al., 2020), they are equally faced with
uncertainties. This is especially true for early career investigators
who might be more severely impacted by the disruption of their
scientific work and unavailability of funds for non-COVID related
projects. Given the unprecedented nature of events, extraordinary
measures should be put in place to ensure physical and mental well-being
of students and professors while alleviating any potential negative
career impacted in the long-term.