advantages of lockdown essay

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The good, the bad and the ugly of lockdowns during Covid-19

Contributed equally to this work with: Talita Greyling, Stephanie Rossouw, Tamanna Adhikari

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation School of Economics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation School of Economics, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

• Talita Greyling, 
• Stephanie Rossouw, 
• Tamanna Adhikari

• Published: January 22, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Amidst the rapid global spread of Covid-19, many governments enforced country-wide lockdowns, with likely severe well-being consequences. In this regard, South Africa is an extreme case suffering from low levels of well-being, but at the same time enforcing very strict lockdown regulations. In this study, we analyse the causal effect of a lockdown and consequently, the determinants of happiness during the aforementioned. A difference-in-difference approach is used to make causal inferences on the lockdown effect on happiness, and an OLS estimation investigates the determinants of happiness after lockdown. The results show that the lockdown had a significant and negative impact on happiness. In analysing the determinants of happiness after lockdown, we found that stay-at-home orders have positively impacted happiness during this period. On the other hand, other lockdown regulations such as a ban on alcohol sales, a fear of becoming unemployed and a greater reliance on social media have negative effects, culminating in a net loss in happiness. Interestingly, Covid-19, proxied by new deaths per day, had an inverted U-shape relationship with happiness. Seemingly people were, at the onset of Covid-19 positive and optimistic about the low fatality rates and the high recovery rates. However, as the pandemic progressed, they became more concerned, and this relationship changed and became negative, with peoples' happiness decreasing as the number of new deaths increased.

Citation: Greyling T, Rossouw S, Adhikari T (2021) The good, the bad and the ugly of lockdowns during Covid-19. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0245546. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546

Editor: Francesco Di Gennaro, National Institute for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani-IRCCS, ITALY

Received: July 29, 2020; Accepted: December 30, 2020; Published: January 22, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Greyling et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: The following authors received salaries from their institutions, whom were also the funders of the research. 1. Prof T Greyling: University of Johannesburg via the University Research Fund. 2. Dr Stephanie Rossouw: Auckland University of Technology via the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1. Introduction

In an attempt to curb the spread of Covid-19 and minimise the loss of life, governments around the world have imposed their version of mandatory self-isolation through implementing lockdown regulations. Unfortunately, restricting people's mobility and depriving them of what matters most might intensify the negative effect on happiness levels.

In an extreme country case, this might be amplified. In this study, we treat an extreme country as a country with very strict lockdown regulations, with likely high infection rates, amidst low levels of well-being. We define well-being as those aspects of life that society collectively agrees are important for a person's quality of life, happiness and welfare. One of the dimensions of well-being, material (income) hinges on a bleak economic outlook.

To this end, our primary aim in this study is to use the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH), a real-time measure of well-being, derived from Big Data, to investigate if lockdown regulations in itself caused a decrease in happiness. Secondly, we determine which factors matter most (factors significantly influencing happiness) to happiness under these changed circumstances. We accomplish these aims by using two econometric techniques: difference-in-difference (DiD) and ordinary least squares (OLS).

Against this backdrop, the current study makes several contributions to the literature:

• Determining whether lockdown regulations cause a decline in happiness –in an extreme country case scenario.
• Investigating specifically the determinants of happiness during a lockdown, whereas other studies have focused on mental well-being and related matters (see section 2).
• Being one of the few studies (see also Rossouw, Greyling and Adhikari; Greyling, Rossouw and Adhikari [ 1 , 2 ]) that investigates the effect of lockdown on happiness making use of real-time Big Data . Other studies such as Hamermesh [ 3 ] and Brodeur et al. [ 4 ] also use Big Data, though limited to Google Trends (see section 2).

These results give policymakers the necessary information to take action in increasing the happiness of the nation and set the scene for increased economic, social and political well-being. It also allows them to reflect on happiness outcomes due to their policy actions. An additional benefit of the current study is that policymakers do not need to wait for extended periods to see the consequences of their policies, as we are making use of real-time data, with immediate information. Usually, policymakers can only evaluate their own decision making, with significant time-lags, prolonging the implementation of corrective actions.

Our results indicate lockdown itself causes a decrease in happiness. Furthermore, in an extreme country case (a country under stringent lockdown regulations coupled with low levels of well-being) what matters most to happiness under lockdown is the factors directly linked to the regulations that were implemented. These factors can be classified as (i) social capital issues; lack of access to alcohol (and tobacco), increased social media usage, and more time to spend at home, of which all are negatively related to happiness except the stay-at-home factor, and (ii) economic issues; concerns over jobs and the threat of retrenchments, which are negatively related to happiness. The finding on the stay-at-home order is interesting as even though lockdown itself caused a decline in happiness, it seems that people adjust and over time begin to appreciate the benefits of staying at home.

Noteworthy is that Covid-19, proxied by new deaths per day, had an inverted U-shape relationship to happiness. Seemingly people were, at the onset of Covid-19, positive and optimistic as the fatality rate was relatively low and recovery rates high. However, as the pandemic progressed, they became more concerned, and this relationship changed and became negative, with peoples' happiness decreasing as the number of new Covid-19 deaths increased.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The next section contains a brief background on South Africa and briefly discusses literature about happiness and studies conducted on the impacts of pandemics and consequently lockdown regulations. Section 3 describes the data, the selected variables and outlines the methodology used. The results follow in section 4, while the paper concludes in section 5.

2. Background and literature review

2.1 south africa.

In this study, we focus on South Africa because it presents us with a unique case to investigate the effect of a lockdown on happiness when levels of well-being are already low. Health and income, two dimensions of well-being, was significantly affected, although in opposite directions. Health was positively affected by the lockdown since it limited the spread of Covid-19. At the stage of writing the paper (3 June 2020), the number of new Covid-19 cases were nearly 120,000 (John Hopkins University [ 5 ]). On the other hand, the economic outlook of the country, and therefore peoples' incomes, was negatively affected. This opposite effect has led to significant debates on the value of the implementation of the lockdown.

Furthermore, South Africa implemented one of the most stringent lockdown regulations (comparable to the Philippines and Jordan), which exacerbated the costs to well-being and the economy while already experiencing a severe economic downturn. Therefore, South Africa is an example of an extreme country case which unfortunately amplifies the effects of the difficult choices made by policymakers. Therefore, we take advantage of this unique country case and determine how stringent lockdown regulations impact happiness during a one in 100-year event.

In South Africa, there are five levels of differing lockdown regulations, with alert level 5 being the most stringent and alert level 1 the most relaxed. The idea behind these levels is to curb the spread of Covid-19 and give time to South Africa's health system to prepare itself. Additionally, as they move down in levels, South Africans receive increasingly more of their previous liberties back. During level 5, which was announced 23 March 2020 and implemented on 27 March 2020, South Africans were only allowed to leave their homes to purchase or produce essential goods. All South Africans were instructed to work from home, there was no travel allowed, the sale of alcohol and tobacco were banned, people were not allowed to exercise outside their homes, and the police and defence force ensured compliance to the restrictions. South Africa moved to level 4 lockdown on 01 May 2020. With this move, they received back the ability to exercise outside from 6 am—9 am, purchase more than just essential goods, including food deliveries as long as it was within curfew.

Interestingly, the sale of alcohol and tobacco was still banned. On 01 June they moved to level 3, allowing restricted sales of alcohol (Mondays to Thursdays) and the re-opening of certain businesses. However, the services industry, especially beauty and tourism, remained closed. At the time of writing this paper, South Africa was still under level 3 lockdown.

Whereas everybody understands that the Covid-19 infections curve needs to be flattened, there are grave concerns that these stringent lockdown regulations will also flatline South Africa's well-being and economy. Before the Covid-19 lockdown, South Africa's average happiness levels were 6.32 compared to an average of 7.23 and 7.16 in Australia and New Zealand, respectively (Greyling et al. [ 2 ]). Furthermore, South Africa had a 29 per cent unemployment rate, and the gross domestic product (GDP) has been estimated to shrink by 7 per cent in 2020 (Bureau of Economic Analysis [ 6 ]). According to the South African Reserve Bank [ 7 ], an additional 3 to 7 million people can potentially become unemployed as a direct consequence of the pandemic, thereby increasing unemployment rates to approximately 50 per cent. The country's sovereign credit rating was downgraded to junk status in March 2020, which impacted on political stability, the level of the national debt and debt interest payments. Add to this already grim situation, the fact that consumption of South Africans has been declining in 2020, with a significant decrease seen after lockdown, then one can very easily see how the well-being and happiness levels in South Africa can plummet.

2.2 Happiness

Why should we care whether people's happiness is adversely impacted by not only a global pandemic but also by the response from the government? The studies of Helliwell, Layard, Stiglitz et al., Veenhoven, Diener and Seligman and others [ 8 – 12 ], have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that if policymakers want to maximise the quality of life of their citizens, they need to consider subjective measures of well-being. Piekalkiewicz [ 13 ] states that happiness may act as a determinant of economic outcomes: it increases productivity, predicts one's future income and affects labour market performance. By measuring happiness, individuals themselves reveal their preference and assigned priority to various domains, which cannot be identified by a measure such as GDP. As was pointed out by Layard [ 9 ], while economists use exactly the right framework for thinking about public policy, the accounts we use of what makes people happy are wrong. In layman's terms, we say that utility increases with the opportunities for voluntary exchange. However, Layard [ 14 ] argues that this overlooks the significance of involuntary interactions between people. Policymakers should formulate policy to maximise happiness or well-being, as is the main aim of many constitutions. This can be achieved by directing economic, social, political and environmental policy to maximise well-being while acknowledging that people's norms, aspirations, feelings and emotions are important. Thereby underscoring that understanding and measuring happiness should be an integral part of the efforts to maximise the quality of life.

On the other hand, if people's happiness is negatively affected, such as it was in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of lockdown regulations, there are far-reaching consequences.

These consequences are as follows:

• Social capital: unhappier people display less altruistic behaviour in the long run (Dunn et al. [ 15 ]). They are also less active, less creative, poor problem solvers, less social, and display more anti-social behaviour (Lyubomirsky et al. [ 16 ]). If unhappier people display more anti-social behaviour, South Africa could see an increase in behaviour such as unrests, violent strikes and perhaps higher crime rates.
• Health care: unhappier people are less physically healthy and die sooner (Lyubomirsky et al. [ 16 ]). Additionally, unhappy people engage in riskier behaviour such as smoking and drinking, thereby placing unnecessary pressure on national health systems.
• Economic: unhappy workers are typically less productive, in particular in jobs that require sociability and problem solving (Bryson et al. [ 17 ]). If an economy can raise the rate of growth of productivity, by ensuring their workers are happier, then the trend growth of national output can pick up.

2.3 Literature on the determinants of happiness during a lockdown

Having established that policymakers should strive to maximise the happiness of their people, it is necessary to know what determines happiness. Previous studies have investigated, at a macro-level, what influences happiness and found that economic growth, unemployment and inflation play a significant role (Stevenson and Wolfers, Perović, Sacks et al. [ 18 – 20 ]). However, these studies were conducted during 'normal' periods and not under such conditions that are currently plaguing the world. The current study will have the opportunity to investigate this exact question, namely what determines happiness during a lockdown driven by a global health pandemic.

Naturally, the number of studies being conducted to examine the effect of Covid-19 is growing exponentially. This increasing interest in the effect of a global pandemic as well as the policies implemented by governments on peoples' well-being, come on the back of relatively few studies conducted during prior pandemics such as SARS and the H1N1. When SARS hit in 2002 and then again when H1N1 hit in 2009, scholars were only truly starting to understand that for governments to formulate policies to increase well-being, you needed to measure well-being. Of the current studies being conducted on the effect of Covid-19 or lockdown regulations on all affected domains, not many studies are in a position to use real-time Big Data, such as we do.

In layman's terms, Big Data is a phrase used to describe a massive volume of both structured (for example stock information) and unstructured data (for example tweets) generated through information and communication technologies such as the Internet (Rossouw and Greyling [ 1 ]). At the time of writing this paper, the following studies were closest aligned with our study and focused on:

• nationwide lockdown on institutional trust, attitudes to government, health and well-being, using survey data collected at two points in time (December 2019 and April 2020) (1003 respondents) (Sibley et al. [ 21 ]). Their preliminary results showed a small increase in people's sense of community and trust. However, they also found an increase in anxiety/depression post-lockdown and hinted at longer-term challenges to mental health.
• the happiness of married and single people while in government-imposed lockdown by running simulations to formulate predictions, using Google Trends data (Hamermesh [ 3 ]). Not surprisingly, married people were more satisfied with life than single people.
• the timing of decision-making by politicians to release lockdown based on a comparison of economic benefits with the social and psychological benefits versus the cost, increase in deaths if policymakers released lockdown too early (Layard et al. [ 22 ])
• the stages of GNH using a Markov switching model in New Zealand (Rossouw et al. [ 23 ]). They found that happiness was at a lower level and the unhappy state lasted longer than was expected. Furthermore, they found that the factors important for New Zealand's happiness post-Covid-19 were related to international travel, employment and mobility.
• exploring Covid-19 related determinants of life dissatisfaction and feelings of anxiety in a cross-country study using survey data collected between 23 March and 30 April (de Pedraza et al. [ 24 ]). They found that persons with poorer general health, without employment, living without a partner, not exercising daily and those actively seeking out loneliness report higher dissatisfaction and higher anxiety. Additionally, they found that the effect of Covid-19 on dissatisfaction and anxiety levels off with a higher number of cases.

2.4 Literature on the causal effect of a lockdown

To the knowledge of the authors, there are only two papers that investigated the causal effect between lockdowns and population well-being. Brodeur et al. [ 4 ] investigated the changes in well-being (and mental health) in the United States and Europe after a lockdown was implemented, using Google Trends data. They found an increase in searches for loneliness, worry and sadness, which indicated a negative effect on mental health. Greyling et al. [ 2 ] conducted a cross-country study investigating the effect of lockdown on happiness. They found that lockdown caused a negative effect on happiness, notwithstanding the different characteristics of the countries (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia), the duration and the type of lockdown regulations. When they compared the effect size of the lockdown regulations, they found that South Africa, with the most stringent lockdown regulations incurred the greatest happiness costs.

Brodeur et al. [ 4 ] study analysed data from one Big Data source, Google Trends and collected data for a short period between only 01 January 2019 and 10 April 2020 in countries that had introduced a full lockdown by the end of this period. Greyling et al. [ 2 ] study used both Google Trends and the GNH index but did not investigate the determinants of happiness after lockdown for an extreme country case.

In summary, taking all of the above into consideration, there is not one study which determines causality between lockdown and happiness and analyses the determinants of happiness in an extreme country case using real-time , Big Data . Therefore, our study is the first of its kind.

3. Data and methodology

To estimate the causal effects of a lockdown on happiness, we use a Difference-in-Difference (DiD) approach (see section 3.3.1). The technique compares happiness (dependent variable), before and after the treatment (the lockdown) to a counterfactual time period in the year before. For the control period, we select the same time period, with the same number of days in 2019, corresponding to the number of days in 2020, thus 152 days in each year (01 January 2020 to 03 June 2020, excluding 29 February 2020). Our results should thus be interpreted as the average impact of the lockdown on happiness, comparing pre and post-lockdown in 2020 to the same time period in 2019, which we assume had normal levels of Gross National Happiness (see a discussion on the GNH in section 3.2.1). In this manner, we also account for seasonal trends in happiness.

In the analyses, we make use of daily data for South Africa. As high-frequency data available at almost real-time, is scarce, we make use of novel Big Data methodologies to harvest data. Additionally, we use the Oxford Stringency dataset that was released in May 2020, which includes data related to lockdown regulations, such as time-series data on the stay-at-home index, Covid-19 cases and Covid-19 deaths (Hale et al., Roser et al. [ 25 , 26 ]).

3.2 Selection of variables

The selection of the variables included in our estimations is based on the reviewed literature, the contents of tweets related to the lockdown and data availability.

3.2.1 Gross National Happiness Index–the dependent variable.

To measure happiness (the dependent variable), we make use of the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH), which was launched in April 2019 (Greyling, Rossouw and Afstereo [ 27 ]). This project measures the happiness (mood) of a country's citizens during different economic, social and political events.

Since February 2020, the researchers extended the project that initially analysed the sentiment of tweets, to incorporate the analysis of the emotions underpinning tweets. The team did this to determine which emotions are most prominent on specific days or events.

To construct the GNH index, the researchers use Big Data methods and extract tweets from the voluntary information-sharing social media platform Twitter. Big Data, such as Twitter, provides real-time information for policymakers to assist them when facing short-term deadlines with imperfect information. Big Data also allows governments to 'listen' and capture those variables which their citizens deem to be important for their well-being, rather than relying on pre-defined economic utility theories. Big Data offers governments the opportunity to observe people's behaviour and not just their opinions. This approach of revealed preferences unveils a reflexive picture of society because it allows the main concerns of citizens (and the priority ranking of those concerns) to emerge spontaneously, and it complements as such the information captured by gross domestic product. Lastly, Big Data does not suffer from non-response bias (Callegaro and Yang [ 28 ]).

Greyling, Rossouw and Afstereo [ 27 ] apply sentiment analysis to a live Twitter-feed and label every tweet as having either a positive, neutral or negative sentiment. This sentiment classification is then applied to a sentiment-balance algorithm to derive a happiness score. The happiness scores range between 0 and 10, with five being neutral, thus neither happy nor unhappy.

All tweets per day are extracted, and a happiness score per hour is calculated. The index is available live on the GNH website (Greyling, Rossouw and Afstereo [ 27 ]). In South Africa, the average number of tweets extracted for 2020 is 68,524 per day. South Africa has approximately 11 million Twitter users, representing almost 18 per cent of the population (Omnicore [ 29 ]). Although the number of tweets is extensive and represents significant proportions of the populations of the countries, it is not representative. However, Twitter accommodates individuals, groups of individuals, organisations and media outlets, representing a kind of disaggregated sample, thus giving access to the moods of a vast blend of Twitter users, not found in survey data.

Furthermore, purely based on the vast numbers of the tweets, it seems that the GNH index gives a remarkably robust reflection of the evaluative mood of a nation. Also, we correlate the GNH index with 'depression' and 'anxiety', derived from the 'Global behaviors and perceptions at the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic data ' survey, for the period from 01 March 2020 (OFS [ 30 ]). We find it negative and statistically significant related, therefore, it seems that the GNH index derived from Big Data gives similar trends to survey data. (We would have appreciated the opportunity to correlate the GNH to a happiness measure–but a happiness measure, as such, was not included in the survey).

Considering the GNH index over time, we found that the index accurately reflects a nation's emotions, for example, when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup on 02 November 2019, the happiness index accurately depicted the joy experienced by South Africans ( Fig 1 ). The hourly happiness score was 7.9 at 13:00, the highest score ever measured, at the exact time that the final whistle was blown to announce the victory of the Springboks over England.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
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Source: Authors' calculations using GNH dataset (Greyling et al. [ 27 ]).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.g001

Also, when the famous American basketball player, Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi, tragically passed away on 27 January 2020, the happiness index once again captured the negative mood of the nation, and the happiness score decreased to 5.8, significantly below the mean (see Fig 2 ). The result of the GNH mirrors the one determined by the Hedonometer, which recorded an average happiness score of 5.89 on the day of Bryant's death. The top three words that made this day sadder than the previous seven were 'crash', 'died' and 'rip'.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.g002

3.2.2 The selection of covariates included in estimations.

We found ourselves in uncharted territory, as there are limited studies estimating happiness functions during a lockdown (see Brodeur et al., Greyling et al., Rossouw et al. [ 2 , 4 , 23 ]). As a result, we considered these studies and the tweets to determine the factors to consider, which might influence happiness during a lockdown , as well as the most tweeted subjects. It was evident from the tweets that the main topics of discussion related to economic concerns, the prohibition of the sale of alcohol and tobacco, the stay-at-home orders and the Covid-19 pandemic itself.

To estimate our difference-in-difference model, we restricted our covariates to the lockdown variable, a year effect, the difference-in-difference estimator and controlled for new Covid-19 deaths, job searches and searches for alcohol. We were restricted in the number of covariates due to the limited observations and potentially encountering the issue of over-identification of the models. Therefore, we selected those variables which were available for both 2019 and 2020, and which were also trending subjects during the lockdown period. We were not able to add a stay-at-home variable which captures the lack of mobility, as the counterfactual time period is then not comparable to 2020.

Lockdown, our treatment variable, divides the sample into two distinct time periods: before the announcement of the lockdown, 23 March 2020 and thereafter. We make use of the date of the announcement of the lockdown rather than the date of the implementation, as this showed the severest effect on happiness (see Brodeur et al. [ 4 ]).

The Covid-19 pandemic and consequent spread of the virus is the reason for the lockdown. As such, we include the number of new daily Covid-19 deaths as well as its square. This will allow us to control for the likelihood of a U-shaped relationship between the number of Covid-19 deaths and happiness. Furthermore, there is likely a lagged effect on happiness due to Covid-19 deaths being reported in the media only the following day. Therefore, we lag these variables by one day. We derive the data from the Oxford Stringency data set (Hale et al. and Roser et al. [ 25 , 26 ]).

To measure jobs (a proxy for future job uncertainty) and the sale of alcohol and tobacco, we use the methodology as set out by Nuti et al. and Brodeur et al. [ 4 , 31 ] and use daily searches on Google Trends (see also Simionescu and Zimmermann [ 7 ]). We considered searches for both the alcohol and tobacco topic; however, the variables follow the same trends during the lockdown period and are highly correlated (r = 0.83). We are, furthermore, restricted in the number of covariates to include in the model and decided to include only 'alcohol' in the estimations. We justify this decision since the ban of alcohol affects a larger proportion of the population. It is estimated that 41 per cent of males and 17.1 per cent of females consume on average 9.3 litres of alcohol per capita annually whereas only 17.6 per cent smoke (Peltzer et al. and Reddy et al. [ 32 , 33 ]). However, as a robustness check, we also run all estimations using the searches for tobacco.

It should be noted that when we use Google Trends data, it is expressed as an index between 0 and 100 with 0 being the "least" interest and 100 being the "most" interest shown in the topic for the year. However, the series are not comparable across years as the underlying data is sourced from different search requests for each of the two years. To address this, we use a scaling procedure outlined in Brodeur et al. [ 4 ]. First, we generate "weekly" interest weights for each day by expressing the average weekly score that a particular daily score fell on, as a proportion of the average yearly score. Then, we multiply the daily scores with these weights to obtain weighted search trends. Finally, we normalise these weighted search trends to render us a score between 0 and 100, which is comparable across years.

Other topics that are trending are related to the 'stay-at-home' orders. The Oxford Stringency dataset includes a time series variable on the stay-at-home orders. It differs on a day to day basis according to its stringency. It is an ordinal variable plus binary of geographic scope. It takes the value 0 if there are no stay-at-home orders and 1 if the government recommends not leaving your house. Value 2 represents people not leaving their homes with the exceptions of daily exercise, grocery shopping, and 'essential' trips. Not leaving your home with minimal exceptions (e.g. allowed to leave only once a week, or only one person can leave at a time, etc.) takes the value 3 (Hale et al. [ 25 ]).

Furthermore, we include the number of tweets per day, as it forms part of the Twitter data extracted daily for South Africa (Greyling et al. [ 27 ]), which is a proxy for connectivity. It also gauges the opportunity cost of not being able to have face to face interactions, which seems to be negatively related to happiness (Chae and Wilson et al. [ 34 , 35 ]). Interestingly the number of tweets increased markedly during the lockdown period, from an average of 60,708 to 80,000 tweets per day. Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for the variables included in the estimations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.t001

3.3 Methodology

3.3.1 difference-in-difference..

Where GNH it is the daily happiness for South Africa at time t . The treatment variable lockdown takes the value of 0 pre-announcement day (23 March) and one post-announcement of lockdown in both the year of the actual lockdown (2020) as well as the year before the lockdown (2019). Year is a dummy variable where 1 is the year 2020. We control for new deaths per million with a one-day lag as well as the quadratic effect of new deaths per million on GNH. Additionally, we control for the effect of job and alcohol searches. As a robustness test, we use the number of new Covid-19 cases instead of new Covid-19 deaths (see Table 4 in S1 Appendix ).

Our main coefficient of interest is the interaction between the lockdown and the year variable. If it is found to be significant, it provides evidence of a causal effect of the lockdown on the dependent variable, in the current year, notwithstanding the trend in 2019.

3.3.2 OLS regression.

Here, y t refers to the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) for each day and X t is a vector of several relevant covariates to account for the changes in the happiness levels during the lockdown period. μ t is the error term.

Due to the various factors that affect happiness, some of our independent variables may be correlated with the error term, leading to endogeneity concerns. Depending on the direction of the correlation between the error term and the X-variable, the coefficient could be biased upwards or downwards. For instance, the coefficient on the indicator for jobs is likely biased upwards as it, in all likelihood, shows the effect of concerns about jobs as well as some other negative economic shock on happiness. In the absence of panel data or an appropriate instrument, it is difficult to ascertain causality to Eq ( 2 ). However, simply correlating the covariates and the error term we find all levels of correlation to be less than 0.3, although a very basic test, this still indicates that the likelihood that endogeneity might bias estimations is relatively small. A natural extension of the work, as better data becomes available with time, would be to address these concerns.

We cannot rule out the probability of autocorrelation and heterogeneity in our data, especially due to its time-series nature. We use robust standard errors to account for this. The choice of our controls, however, comes with a caveat. Seeing as we only have 81 daily observations using a larger battery of covariates would lead to problems arising due to overfitting of the model. This issue is considered in Green [ 36 ], who suggests a minimum of 50 observations for any regressions as well as an additional eight observations per additional term. As a robustness test, we included tobacco rather than alcohol products (see Table 5 in S1 Appendix ).

4. Results and analysis

4.1 difference-in-difference estimation.

Fig 3 tracks the dependent variable (GNH) over the time period before and after the date of the lockdown (23 March) in the year of the lockdown (2020) and the year preceding it. On the day of the announcement of the lockdown and for a few successive days, we see a sharp downwards departure from the 2019 trend, assumed to be normal.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.g003

Table 2 provides the results for the difference-in-difference specification, which helps us to make causal inferences on the effect of the lockdown on the GNH. At the outset, we notice a negative and significant effect of the 'year' variable (p<0.001), showing that on average the GNH was lower in 2020 than in 2019.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.t002

We control for trends in job searches (a proxy for job uncertainty) and alcohol searches (a proxy for increased interest in alcohol-related topics in the specification). Both variables show a negative association with GNH, implying if there are more searches for jobs or alcohol, reflecting a scarcity in these items, GNH decreases. The negative effect of alcohol is statistically significant at the 1% level (p<0.001). We also control for lagged new Covid-19 related deaths and lagged new Covid-19 related deaths squared, both are significant (p<0.001). Interesting is the finding of the significant inverted U-shaped relationship between new Covid-19 deaths and happiness ( Fig 4 ). In the earlier stages of the pandemic, with very few new Covid-19 deaths, it appears that people were positive and optimistic as the fatality rates were very low and the recovery rates very high. However, as time progressed, the higher fatality rates turned the relationship around so that the number of new Covid-19 cases were negatively related to happiness.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.g004

To determine if the decrease in GNH was due to the lockdown (the treatment) specifically and not just due to the year trend, we must consider the estimated coefficient of the interaction variable 'lockdown and year'. We report a negative and statistically significant coefficient (p-value 0.064) on the interaction variable, indicating that 'lockdown' caused, on average a decrease in GNH of 0.101 points when compared to its mean values for average 2019 values, controlling for the general trend in the two years. Thus, we can conclude that the lockdown caused a decline in GNH in 2020 compared to 2019. The decline of 0.101 may seem small at first but given the low general levels of happiness in South Africa compared to other countries (Greyling et al. [ 27 ]) the reduction is substantial.

4.2 Regression analysis

To address the second research question, namely, to determine the factors that are related to happiness after the lockdown was implemented, we consider the results of Table 3 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.t003

Table 3 shows that job searches (p-value 0.09), searches for alcohol (p-value<0.001) and the number of tweets is negatively related to happiness. In contrast, the stay-at-home index is positively related to happiness (p-value<0.001). The squared relationship between new Covid-19 deaths and happiness is negative and statistically significant (p-value<0.001), indicating that this relationship changed over time as was highlighted in section 4.1. Suppose we consider the relatively low mortality rate (0.02 per cent of confirmed cases in the early stages) compared to countries such as the USA (3.9 per cent), the U.K. (15.4 per cent) and Spain (9.4 per cent). In that case, it could explain the initial positive relationship between the number of new Covid-19 deaths and happiness. Although as time passed and the death rate increased (currently, the mortality rate is at 1.5 per cent of confirmed cases), this relationship became negative. As a robustness test, we used the number of new Covid-19 cases and its square instead of the new Covid-19 deaths and found similar results (see Table 4 in S1 Appendix ).

As expected, job searches, a proxy for uncertainty about the future job market is negatively related to happiness (p-value<0.001). Analysing the tweets, we realised that this is a major concern, which is closely related to economic concerns. The economic performance of South Africa in the last year has been weak with high levels of unemployment (increase to 50 per cent), low growth rates (GDP is expected to contract with 7 per cent in 2020) and high debt to income ratios (government debt as a percentage of GDP– 80 per cent). In a recent survey conducted by Statistics South Africa on behavioural and health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic (Statistics South Africa [ 37 ]), it was found that 95 per cent of the respondents were very concerned about the economy. In contrast, only 60 per cent was concerned about the Covid-19 pandemic itself. This supports our current findings in that economic factors matter more to South Africans happiness levels than Covid-19 itself.

Alcohol-related searches are also found to be negatively related to happiness (p-value<0.001). Considering the close correlation between alcohol and tobacco products, we can assume that what holds for alcohol products, also holds for tobacco products. As a robustness test, we excluded the alcohol variable and included searches for tobacco variable and found very similar results (see Table 5 in S1 Appendix ). South Africa is one of the very few countries globally that have banned alcohol and tobacco sales during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is argued that these products contribute to the negative effects of the virus. The banning of these products had severe implications on different levels of society. Individuals see this as a major infringement of their human rights, negatively affecting their happiness. Furthermore, research done by Sommer et al. [ 38 ] proved that because of the presence of hordenine in beer, it significantly contributes to mood-elevation. In South Africa, which is well-known for its high per capita beer and alcohol consumption (Statistics South Africa [ 39 ]), also related to 'socialising', the ban on these products had a severe negative effect on happiness. Even in level 3, when the ban on alcohol sales was lifted, but still restricted, we found this negative relationship.

The restricted sale of alcohol and tobacco has indirect consequences for South Africans happiness via the economic impact since these industries are two of the largest industries in South Africa. They employ people across the whole supply chain from production to retail. Due to the ban on these industries, people can potentially lose their jobs. Lastly, the government sector forgoes all taxes on these products. This is against the backdrop of the recent downgrade of South Africa's debt rating to junk status in an already very uncertain fiscal environment. If all of these factors are aggregated, we can understand that the cumulative effect of the banning and restriction of sales of these products severely decreases the happiness levels. In Table 5 in S1 Appendix , we use tobacco searches instead of alcohol to estimate the determinants of happiness, which gives us results that are qualitatively similar to Table 3 .

The number of tweets is negatively related to happiness (p-value<0.001). Previous research has shown that increases in the use of social media are negatively related to happiness (Rolland et al., Chae and Wilson et al. [ 34 , 40 , 41 ]). Noteworthy is that the number of tweets during the lockdown period increased significantly from an average of 60,708 per day before the lockdown to 80,000 per day after the lockdown indicating that more people used social media during the lockdown period.

Interesting is the result of the stay-at-home orders being positively related to happiness (p-value<0.001). On analysing the contents of the tweets, we find the following. South Africans are wary of contracting Covid-19, and therefore, they abide by the stay-at-home orders and social distancing regulations to minimise the risk. That means that the stay-at-home orders in itself increase happiness; it is only once the other lockdown regulations are added that a total decrease in happiness levels are experienced.

Additional benefits revealed from analysing the tweets show that being at home provides a more peaceful and calmer environment compared to the rushed experience outside their homes. Also, people in the suburbs seem to be more convivial, with strangers greeting one another as people went for short walks around their neighbourhoods. In general, people have more time to spend with their loved ones. People earning salaries incur major savings, as there is less opportunity to spend money. People also save on commuting to and from workplaces and other destinations. One of the unexpected benefits of the stay-at-home orders is the much lower crime rates experienced in the country. Homes are constantly occupied, limiting the risk of residential robberies (-3.8 per cent). Other types of crimes such as murder (-72 per cent), rape (-87.2 per cent) and carjacking (-80.9 per cent) are much lower as well (Adapted from the speech of Police Minister Cele 2020 [ 42 ]).

In summary, what changed when the lockdown regulations to curb the spread of Covid-19 were implemented? It caused a significant decrease in happiness, and factors related to the lockdown regulations became relevant determinants of happiness.

5. Conclusions

In this paper, we used the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH), a real-time measure of well-being, derived from Big Data, to investigate whether lockdown regulations caused a decrease in happiness. Additionally, we determined which factors matter to happiness under these changed circumstances. We accomplished these aims by using two models: difference-in-difference and ordinary least squares.

We added to the current literature by determining causality between lockdown and happiness and analysing the determinants of happiness after a lockdown in an extreme country case using real-time , Big Data . Subsequently, this was the first study of its kind.

To determine if the decrease in GNH was due to the lockdown, specifically, we considered the estimated coefficient of the interaction variable 'lockdown and year'. We found a negative and statistically significant coefficient on the interaction variable, indicating that the lockdown caused a decline in GNH in 2020 compared to 2019.

As regards to the factors that are related to happiness after the lockdown was implemented, we found searches for alcohol (tobacco), the number of tweets and uncertainty about the future job market to be negatively related to happiness. In contrast, stay-at-home orders are positively related to happiness. Interesting is the negative and statistically significant squared relationship between new Covid-19 deaths and happiness, indicating that this relationship initially was positive but became negative over time.

Considering the results mentioned above, it ultimately means that if policymakers want to increase happiness levels and increase the probability to achieve the happiness levels of 2019, they must consider those factors that matter most to peoples' happiness. These factors include allowing creatures of habits some of their lost comforts by reinstating the sale of alcohol and tobacco. In saying that, we do advocate for responsible alcohol use by all South Africans and note that the significant effect of the ban on the sale of alcohol could be confounded by the restriction on social gatherings as well.

These results are important for countries in similar well-being situations, thus low levels of happiness, a diverse state of the economy and an increasing number of Covid-19 cases to evaluate what the effect of a strict lockdown is.

Additionally, policymakers should assure citizens that there is a credible plan to get the economy, which is currently in dire straits, back on track. Such an economic plan should stimulate growth, create job opportunities and increase employment rates, supply the necessary infrastructure and deal with curbing vast budget deficits and debt burdens. Hopefully, such policies will fuel the dying embers of a dying economy and increase well-being levels.

Lastly, it would be remiss of us not to note the limitations of the study. First, we were restricted in the number of covariates we could add to our difference-in-difference model due to the limited observations and therefore potentially overidentifying the models. Second, regarding the inverted U-shaped relationship between new Covid-19 deaths and happiness, we acknowledge that there might be confounding factors at play, initially seen as ‘positives' of the lockdown, but later turned into negatives. However, using alternative sets of covariates in the regression analyses, the inverted U-shape between new Covid-19 deaths and happiness remained. Therefore we trust that the revealed relationship is robust.

Supporting information

S1 appendix. robustness checks..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245546.s002

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleagues Professor Emeritus John Knight from Oxford University and Dr Kelsey O'Connor from STATEC Luxembourg, for their generosity in providing feedback on the study.

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Lockdown has led to positive change for some people. Here's why

70% of participants reported having experienced at least one positive effect of the COVID-19 lockdown.

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Stay up to date:, sdg 03: good health and well-being.

• Studies show some people are reporting positive changes in lockdown, with 83% having more time to do enjoyable things and 65% spending more time in outdoors.
• It is believed that additional time and the removal of daily demands during lockdown may be improving quality of life for some people.
• Unfortunately, groups such as older adults and those living on their own may be less able to benefit.
• Half of the participants who reported positive changes were able to keep these going once restrictions were eased, which bodes well for their post-pandemic lives.

National lockdowns have been the most profound and significant public health interventions within living memory. They have been difficult socially and economically, and have negatively affected people’s health in many different ways .

But for some people lockdowns have provided an unexpected opportunity to make positive changes to their lives, running counter to prevailing narratives of disrupted daily lives, health inequalities and damaged mental health .

Have you read?

In lockdown britain, 'mancunian motivator' brings fun and fitness to neighbours, fitness apps grew by nearly 50% during the first half of 2020, study finds, covid-19 lets us see the world through a different lens.

In May 2020, my colleagues and I surveyed over 3,000 people in Scotland to find out what positive changes people had made in their lives during the lockdown period. We also wanted to find out who had made these positive changes, to see if there were particular groups that were more able to do this than others.

In the survey, we assessed the positive changes that people had experienced across a number of different aspects of their lives since the start of lockdown. There were questions about whether people had experienced positive changes in relationships with family and friends and in the wider community. We also asked about beneficial changes in people’s behaviour relating to their health, including physical activity and sleep.

More than half the people we surveyed reported these changes for the better: being more appreciative of things usually taken for granted (reported by 83% of participants), having more time to do enjoyable things (by 67%), spending more time in nature or outdoors (by 65%), paying more attention to personal health (by 62%), doing more physical activity (by 54%) and spending more time with a partner or spouse (by 53%).

An Australian study (still in preprint, meaning its findings are yet to be reviewed by other scientists) also sought to find out similar information. In a survey of over 1,000 people, it found that 70% of participants reported having experienced at least one positive effect of the pandemic. Three main positive effects noted in this survey were: having the opportunity to spend more time with family, having greater flexibility in working arrangements and appreciating having a less busy life.

The important role of time was highlighted across both studies. Lockdown has removed many of life’s routines and demands – and for some people this has afforded them more time to spend on activities they enjoyed and valued. Noticing that how we spend time has changed – and thinking about what we can do with any additional time that we have – may be an important first step in making positive changes to our lives during lockdown.

People also noted being more appreciative of things previously taken for granted and the slower pace of life that lockdown has brought. For many people, this may have enabled them to step back and reflect on their lives, their futures and what is important to them in a way that they would not otherwise have the opportunity to do, without the demands of daily commutes or social commitments.

Positive changes not universal

Turning to who experienced the positive changes, our study revealed that the groups with higher levels of positive change were women, younger people, people who were married or living with their partner, those who were employed and those reporting better health. These findings suggest that while some groups were able to take advantage of lockdown as an unexpected opportunity to make positive changes in their lives, others – such as older adults and those living on their own – were not.

We were also interested in finding out what would happen to the positive changes that people had made once restrictions started lifting. Would they be able to keep them up? In a separate paper , based on the same group of participants, we examined the changes that people had made to their physical activity, sitting and sleep during the first national lockdown period and whether they had maintained these two months later, once restrictions had been eased.

The good news was that half of the participants who reported positive changes in their behaviours during lockdown were able to keep these going once restrictions were eased. Some were even able to improve them further. So, while we are currently experiencing another period of national lockdown in the UK, it’s reassuring to know that some positives could emerge.

However, we should keep in mind that winter, the new strains of the virus circulating and being over a year into the pandemic will all give this lockdown a different feel to last spring’s, and that this might have an influence on what positive changes people are able to make and sustain. But as we think ahead to the post-pandemic recovery phase, the lesson from our research is that there are definitely some changes people will want to keep.

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Weighing the benefits and costs of COVID-19 restrictions

July 20, 2021 – Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers and the public have often vehemently disagreed about the pros and cons of restrictions such as lockdowns. Proponents of restrictions argue that they save lives; opponents say they destroy livelihoods. Amid these often nasty debates, researchers have been churning out benefit-cost analyses that aim to shed light on which restrictions are “worth it” and which aren’t.

“There are now a huge number of these analyses,” said Lisa Robinson , senior research scientist and deputy director of the Center for Health Decision Science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s become an enormous undertaking.” For her part, Robinson has been exploring the complexities involved in valuing deaths averted by COVID-19 policies , using a well-established but widely-misunderstood metric called the “value per statistical life,” or VSL.

In the big picture, analyses of COVID-19 policies need to take into account how many lives they could potentially save, of course. But they also need to consider the potential downsides. For instance, how many people could lose their jobs if a state puts a lockdown into effect? What educational losses will occur among kids who miss months of in-person school? If restrictions on restaurants are lifted, how do we weigh the economic benefits against the potential increase in COVID-19 cases—and the deaths that might result?

“What benefit-cost analysis does is require people to carefully and rigorously explore the impacts of a policy,” Robinson said. “Something may sound like a great idea on the surface, but digging more deeply into its real-world effects often unearths unexpected consequences. These analyses also highlight the trade-offs implicit whenever we make a decision about how to allocate resources.”

Assigning a money value to life

Robinson has been exploring how best to estimate the VSL—a metric commonly used to evaluate lifesaving interventions—in analyzing the relative costs and benefits of COVID-19 policies. She tackled the issue in a study she co-authored last year, which a recent article in The Economist characterized as “the best attempt at weighing up these competing valuations.”

Although the phrase “value per statistical life” suggests that the government, or someone else, is somehow placing a value on someone’s life, Robinson emphasizes that this is not the case. Rather, economists start by investigating how much of their own income individuals are willing to exchange to reduce their own chance of dying by a small amount—such as by paying extra to buy a safer car or choosing a less risky job for lower pay. These estimates are then converted into estimates of value of reducing expected deaths—that is to say, into the VSL.

Policymakers often use VSL, for example, when determining what safety requirements to impose on automobiles or how low to set standards for pollution emissions. In looking at the population as a whole, U.S. regulatory agencies making benefit-cost calculations currently estimate the VSL as roughly $10 or $11 million. A $10 million VSL means that a typical individual is willing to pay $1,000 to reduce his or her chance of dying within a given year by 1 in 10,000, Robinson explained in a 2020 blog post that looked at COVID-19 benefit-cost analysis and the VSL.

She noted, however, that the $10 million or $11 million figure is for the average member of the population—for someone middle-aged. An individual’s willingness to pay to reduce mortality risk may not stay the same across their life course. For example, older people have fewer expected years of life remaining than the average member of the population, and less opportunity for future earnings, which could change the VSL calculation and therefore make a difference when COVID-19 policies are assessed.

Yet another consideration to take into account is the value people may place on avoiding the substantial pain and suffering caused by COVID-19—including struggling to breathe, or being put on a ventilator—which could increase the VSL. In an October 2020 paper , Robinson’s colleague and frequent co-author James Hammitt , professor of economics and decision sciences, also noted that people may be more likely to place a higher value on avoiding risks they view as “dreaded, uncertain, catastrophic, and ambiguous”—like COVID-19.

The overall point, according to Robinson, is that analysts and policymakers comparing the benefits and costs of particular COVID-19 policies should take care to examine uncertainty in the VSL estimates. VSL is likely to vary depending on who is affected by the policy and by how they view the risks that they experience.

She acknowledges the difficulty involved in deciding on COVID-19 restrictions. But she is also gratified to see that people are using benefit-cost analysis to carefully explore the implications of those tough decisions.

“When COVID hit, benefit-cost analysis really got a lot of attention in the mass media,” she said. “I was so excited that this field that I’ve been involved in for so long is now the subject of stories in major news outlets like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. People are really paying attention to its usefulness in policymaking.”

– Karen Feldscher

photo: Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia Commons

Seven positive outcomes of COVID-19

COVID-19 has had undeniable and horrific consequences on people’s lives and the economy. With sickness, death and unemployment rates soaring almost everywhere on our planet, it is easy to despair.

Notwithstanding the gruesomeness of this situation, there are some outcomes that could have a long-term positive impact on the planet and humanity.

1. The Environment

The first positive aspect of COVID-19 is the effect on the environment .  Carbon emissions are down globally and with manufacturing and air travel grinding to a halt, the planet has had a chance to rejuvenate.

China recorded an 85 per cent increase in days with good air quality in 337 cities between January and March. With tourists gone from Italy, the long-polluted canals of Venice now appear clear as fish and other wildlife start returning. Elsewhere, wildlife is also reappearing in other major cities and the biodiversity is slowly starting to return in various parts of the world.

The coronavirus is also raising hopes of fewer battles and less conflict, resulting in increased levels of peace. The United Nations called to end all wars in the face of COVID-19 as the world confronts a common enemy: “It’s time to put armed conflict on lockdown,” stated Secretary-General António Guterres.

So many businesses have had to reinvent themselves with a new 'business as unusual' philosophy.

And according to the ABC, a ceasefire was declared by the Saudis fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. Although there are many places in the Middle East where war persists, a stronger lockdown could lead to less violence in these countries too.

3. Connectedness

A third positive outcome is a rejuvenated sense of community and social cohesion. Self-isolation challenges us as social animals who desire relationships, contact and interaction with other humans.

However, people all around the world are finding new ways to address the need for interconnectedness.  In Italy, one of the worst-hit countries, people are joining their instruments and voices to create music from their balconies . People are leading street dance parties while maintaining social distancing.

People are using social media platforms to connect, such as the Facebook group The Kindness Pandemic , with hundreds of daily posts. There is a huge wave of formal and informal volunteering where people use their skills and abilities to help.

4. Innovation

COVID-19 is a major market disruptor that has led to unprecedent levels of innovation. Due to the lockdown, so many businesses have had to reinvent themselves with a new 'business as unusual' philosophy.

This includes cafes turning into takeaway venues (some of which also now sell milk or face masks) and gin distilleries now making hand sanitisers .

Many businesses have had to undergo rapid digitalisation and offer their services online. Some could use this wave of innovation to reimagine their business model and change or grow their market.

5. Corporate Responsibility

Coronavirus is driving a new wave of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The global pandemic has become a litmus test for how seriously companies are taking their CSR and their work with key stakeholders: the community, employees, consumers and the environment.

Home-schooling is becoming the new way of learning, exposing many parents to what their children know and do.

Companies are donating money, food and medical equipment to support people affected by the coronavirus. Others are giving to healthcare workers, including  free coffee at McDonald’s Australia and millions of masks from  Johnson & Johnson .

Many are supporting their customers, from Woolworths introducing an exclusive shopping hour for seniors and people with disabilities to Optus giving free mobile data so its subscribers can continue to connect.

6. Reimagined Education

The sixth positive outcome is massive transformation in education. True, most of it was not by choice. With schools closing down all around the world, many teachers are digitalising the classroom , offering online education, educational games and tasks and self-led learning.

Silver linings amid the suffering: Professor Debbie Haski-Leventhal believes a new found sense of gratitude for freedoms we take for granted and a global trend in thanking health workers who are at the frontline are among the positives to come out of the crisis.

We are globally involved in one of the largest-scale experiments in changing education at all levels. Home-schooling is becoming the new way of learning, exposing many parents to what their children know and do.

Similarly, universities are leading remote learning and use state-of-the-art solutions to keep students engaged. Some universities are using augmented and virtual reality to provide near real-life experiences for galvanising students’ curiosity, engagement and commitment and for preparing students for the workplace.

7. Gratitude

Finally, the seventh gift that COVID-19 is giving us is a new sense of appreciation and gratefulness . It has offered us a new perspective on everything we have taken for granted for so long – our freedoms, leisure, connections, work, family and friends. We have never questioned how life as we know it could be suddenly taken away from us.

Hopefully, when this crisis is over, we will exhibit new levels of gratitude . We have also learned to value and thank health workers who are at the frontline of this crisis, risking their lives everyday by just showing up to their vital work. This sense of gratefulness can also help us develop our resilience and overcome the crisis in the long-term.

• Will a vaccine really solve our COVID-19 woes?
• How Sydney has coped with pandemics in the past

All of these positive aspects come at a great price of death, sickness and a depressed global economy. As heartbreaking and frightening as this crisis is, its positive outcomes can be gifts we should not overlook. If we ignore them, all of this becomes meaningless.

It will be up to us to change ourselves and our system to continue with the positive environmental impact, peace, connectedness, innovation, corporate responsibility, reimagined education and gratitude. This crisis will end. We will meet again. We can do so as better human beings.

Debbie Haski-Leventhal is a Professor of Management at the Macquarie Business School. She is a TED speaker and the author of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Tools and Theories for Responsible Management and The Purpose-Driven University .

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15 Positive Things Associated With the Lockdown

Does shelter-in-place have a silver lining.

Posted May 9, 2020 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Undoubtedly, there are terrible things happening to people’s health, their lives, and to the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the spirit of gratitude , my family and I brainstormed some of the positive side effects of the several-months-long lockdown. Here they are:

1. Fewer expenses. While many people are struggling with job and income loss, staying at home means less money spent on transportation/commuting, entertainment, eating out, and the like.

2. Eating a bit healthier. Yes, buying and finding food has turned into a somewhat dangerous expedition of exposing oneself to crowds, but the lockdown has helped some of us focus on healthier eating — eliminating fast food, impulse snack purchases, etc.

3. Quality time with family. While some families are experiencing stress and conflict being sequestered in a small place, many of us are finding staying at home an opportunity to strengthen family relationships through cooperative activities and shared entertainment.

4. Catching up on reading and Netflix. “The family that reads/streams together, stays together.” Yes, we miss going to the movies, concerts, and theatres, but there are lots of good books, movies, and shows available in the home.

5. Improving cooking/baking skills. My cooking, and my wife’s baking, have benefited greatly from the opportunity to make more from less, and with the luxury of putting time into our culinary/baking pursuits.

6. The pets are happy. The dogs are going on more walks, and the cats get more attention (and treats).

7. Spring cleaning has extended into summer. Our house and cabinets have never been more organized, and we have a mound of used clothing and goods to donate when the donation center reopens.

8. Gardening skills are improving. The yard has never looked better, and we’re growing some food at home.

9. No bar tabs. Enough said.

10. Healthier in the long run. Because we are not exposed to others, we haven’t had any colds or non-COVID flus this spring.

11. No impulse buying. Well, as long as we stay away from online shopping.

12. Driving less = less pollution. Not only are we saving money on gas (or electricity for my plug-in), but we aren’t polluting as much, and the Southern California traffic has been lighter and the air cleaner.

13. Retirement preview. I’m getting a preview of what retirement life might look like.

14. Exercising and getting in shape. Our treadmill has never been so active.

15. Spirituality . There is time for meditation , reflection, and quality communications via phone and Facetime with loved ones.

What are some of your “positives” resulting from the lockdown?

Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. , is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College.

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The unforeseen benefits of lockdown

Frank Land touches on the new opportunities provided by technology for exploration and novel experiences, while Ya’ir Klein says the pandemic has given us time for reflection, and Louise Smith uses science to explain strange happenings

I can appreciate Richard Friedman’s concerns about the damage lockdown can do to our brains and mental states ( If you’re ecstatic after a trip to the shops, it’s your brain thanking you for the novelty , 25 March), but am surprised that he does not mention the new opportunities provided by technology for exploration and novel experiences.

Each day brings an array of conferences, discussions and debates, bringing people from around the globe together in ways undreamed of only a short while ago. Using Zoom or Microsoft Teams, I have been able to attend, learn and contribute to a range of topics, some totally new to me, but fascinating – and opening new interests.

Instead of the annual Christmas card, I have seen and talked to family and friends from all over the world. I know not everybody has the means to take advantage of this technology. Of course, Richard also knows that his mice cannot use Zoom . Frank Land Totnes, Devon

Richard Friedman’s piece made some excellent points about lockdown being really bad for our brains, especially in relation to young people.

For many of us older people, though, it’s been a period when we’ve also realised just how many people care for us, and we for them, too, which had been largely missing from our lives before. This pandemic has also given us time for reflection over the last year on the wonder of inhabiting an awesome planet, which we need to respect and nurture, and that we may have been taking for granted. This is not to say that Covid has been a blessing – just not an unmitigated curse. Ya’ir Klein London

I had just finished Richard Friedman’s article on the depressing effects of lockdown on the brain when a text message arrived from my daughter, who is 15 years married. She was wondering why I had addressed her birthday card, just received, to her maiden name, something I had never done previously.

Thanks to Professor Friedman’s most interesting article, I was able to retain some dignity by offering her a scientific reason rather than a flimsy excuse. Louise Smith King’s Lynn, Norfolk

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Things we learned to appreciate more during covid-19 lockdown, curfews helped tomislav’s family appreciate the value of living in an intergenerational household and spending quality time together.

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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is of a scale most people alive today have never seen. Lockdowns and curfews to contain the spread of the virus impacted the way children learn, the way their families earn a living, and how safe they feel in their homes and communities. Despite the ongoing threat, countries around the world are starting to lift restrictions. As we question whether we will ever go back to what we once knew to be “normal”, its worth taken a step back to see how we can build on what we have learned to build back a better world for children.

As a journalist, UNICEF photographer Tomislav Georgiev was one of the rare professionals with a permit to go out during the curfews and capture images of the deserted streets of the capital. But he discovered that in times like this, the most valuable images can be found closer to home. He turned his lenses from the outside world to capture photos of his own family with a loving eye. In a household where four generations live together, Tomislav captured scenes of play, family celebrations, sharing, exploring and learning new skills.

“I realized that no matter how much time we think we have; at the end of the day, what I came to appreciate was that we simply don’t spend enough quality time with our families,” says Tomislav.

Days in lockdown were an opportunity for children to reinvent ways of play and learning,  exploring their immediate environment and making the most of what they had available. Building resilience in children is one way we help them to cope in difficult moments.

Curfews were also a time to help children learn responsibility and their role in contributing in   our own way to find a solution to collective problems. “The silent understanding of my children was simply astonishing. We stay home, no questions asked, no demands to go and play with friends. Their lives have completely changed, yet they seem to grasp the importance of their contribution better than most adults,” says Tomislav.

During curfews many learned about the importance of being creative with the scarce resources and limited physical space they had at home. Also, many came to appreciate that small acts of kindness and gratitude to other family members helps to boost emotional wellbeing.

Some even learned new skills but what matters most is learning to appreciate the emotional connections made between different generations.  Its these connections that help us to develop the emotional resilience’s we need to get through stressful times.

“It is true – this crisis has taken its toll on humanity. However, it also provided an opportunity for generations to unite and perhaps begun to shape our younger generations to think differently about their own individual roles and how we as individuals can all contribute in our own way to find a solution to collective problems,” says Tomislav.

UNICEF remains committed to its mission to provide essential support, protection and information as well as hope of a brighter day for every child. UNICEF stands united with one clear promise to the world: we will get through this together, for every child .

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Essay on Lockdown in English for Students and Children

This long essay on lockdown in English is suitable for students of classes 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, 11, 12, and also for competitive exam aspirants. All important information related to how to write an amazing essay about Lockdown.

Long Essay on Lockdown in English 800 Words

Lockdown essay in English – Lockdown is a term that exploded collectively around the world in the year 2020. With the widespread attack of an invisible virus, known as the Novel Coronavirus , the entire world was devastated by the Pandemic of this virus. It occurs during a wide variety of emergencies and it disrupts normal life.

Many words became popular after the arrival of Coronavirus, the term “lockdown” being one of them. A lockdown is a period of time when people have to stay home and are only allowed to travel in an emergency. During this period everything is closed except for some essential services like hospitals, grocery stores, medical stores, etc.

Introduction

Coronavirus has been considered the most contagious virus ever in the history of mankind. Its effects have become catastrophic within a short time. To prevent the spread of this Coronavirus in the country, our government has taken some drastic steps.

One of the most important measures implemented is a lockdown, where all businesses have been closed, all people have been confined to their homes and almost all professional, personal, and economic activities have come to a standstill.

The lockdown was announced and enforced on the 25 th of March, 2020. It has been extended, in phases, to continue till mid-June. The government has issued advisories to all citizens to practice social distancing and stay at home. The purpose of the lockdown is to prevent community transmission of this deadly virus so that the chain of transmission can be broken.

Each and every person faced many difficulties during this period but for the daily wagers, it was much more difficult. Work from home, online education , and online business were some of the options during this period, and the Indian government also helped the people a lot.

Online Education During Lockdown

For the first time, schools in India have moved to online classes. It is a struggle for the teacher as well as the students. School students, children, and their parents felt the impact to close schools and educational institutions.

The lockdown situation prompted people to learn and use digital technology and as a result, increased digital literacy.

The teaching material is easily shared among the students and the doubt questions are solved on Telegram, WhatsApp, E-mail, and various social media. Students need to learn digital skills for their own sake and improve the quality of education as well as changes in syllabus, textbooks, teacher training, and examination systems, but at the very least, the quality of online education must also improve needed.

Advantages of Lockdown

Due to the lockdown, on the one hand, while people have been forced to remain imprisoned in the house, on the other hand, many big benefits are also being seen. Some important benefits of essay on lockdown:-

• The rapidly spreading Coronavirus has been controlled by applying Lockdown.
• Due to the lockdown, the movement of vehicles has been reduced very much, factories have been closed, and the air of the cities has started to clear due to the rein in such activities.
• The impact of the lockdown is also being seen on global warming. In early April, scientists showed a hole of 1,000,000 square kilometers in the ozone layer above the North Pole. According to NASA, it has started filling these holes now.
• Earth’s vibration has been reduced by 30 to 50 percent due to less traffic, machines, and noise pollution.
• Due to Coronavirus, there has been a change in the cleanliness habits of the people. People are being more vigilant. Due to the lockdown, more time is also available for cleaning the house.
• People are learning to live with limited resources and insist on being self-sufficient (or Aatmnirbhar ) in the future so that they can produce themselves.
• During this lockdown period, we have got a lot of time for self-development and self-awareness.
• Most people in Lockdown are cooking at home and eating the same. Health will also be good due to good food.

Disadvantage of Lockdown

Some important disadvantages of the essay on Lockdown:-

• Many migrant laborers got trapped in different cities and they could not return to their homes due to which they had to face many difficulties.
• Many industries like agriculture, education, and entertainment are suffering. It has negatively impacted the world economy.
• Unemployment has increased rapidly due to the lockdown. Because of this many people have lost their jobs.
• All schools and colleges were closed due to the lockdown, due to which the students were not able to study well.

Lockdown 2021

The lockdown was imposed due to Coronavirus in March 2020 last year. The same situation is being seen again. Again in April 2021, Coronavirus is spreading rapidly due to which lockdown is being imposed in all the states one by one.

In view of this spreading Coronavirus, the CBSE board canceled the class 10 examination and postponed the class 12 examination.

Lockdown is something that affects people from all backgrounds and especially the daily wagers. Some of the main problems during a lockdown are employment, poverty, and starvation.

Overall, we should keep in mind that lockdowns are only imposed for our welfare, so it is always our duty to follow the rules of lockdown.

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I hope you like this post “ Essay on Lockdown in English “. If you want to give any suggestions then comment below. Share this essay with your friends.

My Name is Mukesh Kumar. I am a Teacher, Blogger, Educational Content Writer, and Founder of CBSE Digital Education.

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Essay on Lockdown

‘Lockdown’ refers to the suspension of the usual privileges of citizens, regarding their movement and socializing. It is imposed by a competent authority to prevent any untoward incident. In India, a lockdown was imposed for many months by the government to contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease. Find here some well-described essays to know in detail about the lockdown.

Short and Long Essay on Lockdown in English

Following short and long essays on Lockdown in different word limits are given here that is useful for students of classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and class 12 in English in 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 500 words. Also find short Lockdown essay 10 lines.

Lockdown Essay 10 Lines (100 – 150 Words)

1) Lockdown refers to the prevention of citizens from moving and socializing as usual.

2) Lockdown is imposed by the government in case of any emergency.

3) India has undergone a lockdown to control the widespread of the Corona virus.

4) The government of India imposed the first lockdown on 25 March 2020, Wednesday.

5) India observed continuous 150 days complete shutdown in the lockdown.

6) Except for the emergency services, everything was closed and restricted.

7) The lockdown was continued for a few months in four parts.

8) The lockdown helped in controlling the widespread coronavirus and massive deaths.

9) Lives and works of many people were affected by the lockdown.

10) Lockdown was not fruitful for the economy as India suffered negative GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Essay 1 (250 Words)

Introduction

Lockdown is an emergency protocol implemented by the government of India with an objective to contain the spread of a novel coronavirus epidemic. The government implemented a 21 days countrywide lockdown at the beginning which was continued for many months in 4 parts in the entire nation and further the state governments implemented it as per their states need. India was under lockdown for more than 150 days continuously.

Lockdown – The Only Remedy against Novel Coronavirus

Novel coronavirus disease is highly contagious and it spreads fast from person to person. No other disease before has been known to spread such a fast rate as the novel coronavirus. There is no option other than to treat the affected symptomatically; however, the final recovery depends largely on an individual’s stamina and immunity. From the perspective of this scenario, the lockdown seems to be the only practical and effective solution to prevent the spread of the disease.

Although we cannot imagine such scenario for more time our government courage to take such a bold step. It was implemented to keep safe from this deadly virus. Lockdown badly effected our economy and today it is in its fracture mode.

Success of Lockdown

Although we felt safe when the government took such a major but some experts remark lockdown as an unplanned action and it has directly affected the entire nation. Apart from India many other countries also adopted lockdown but they are strong enough to cope up with the economic damage caused due to lockdown.

It would not be wrong to say that the lockdown reduced the flow of this virus, but at the same time cases started to increase rapidly after it was unlocked in India. India became the second-highest infected country. So, in this term, we cannot say that lockdown was truly successful.

Even today schools, colleges, parks, public spaces, cinemas in India are closed. The lockdown can be still seen but the cases are decreasing comparatively. The vaccine has been developed and soon people will get rid of this deadly virus till than keep wearing your mask, wash your hand frequently, use sanitizer and follow social distancing.

Essay 2 (400 Words)

‘Lockdown’ as the name implies is a complete lockdown imposed on the usual movement of the general population of a place. A lockdown can be localized or applied over a wide area, depending on the purpose.

Lockdown in India

• First lockdown : It was 25th March 2020 when it was implemented for the first time, till the 14th of April. When the entire nation was completely shut except for some necessary grocery shops and health facilities.
• Second Lockdown : The second lockdown was announced from 15th April to 4th May with the same set of rules and regulations.
• Third Lockdown : It was implemented from the 4th of May to the 17th of May but in this phase of lockdown some special trains were run to help the daily wages workers. Some people stuck abroad were also bought back. This operation was named ‘Operation Samudrsetu’.
• Fourth Lockdown : It was implemented up to 31st of May and further different states extended as per the condition of their state. Districts were divided into three zones as per the COVID cases in the area. Red zone for most infected areas, Orange for few cases in the area whereas Green for areas with no infection.

Impacts of Lockdown

• On Novel Coronavirus Disease

This is the most significant and most desirable impact of the lockdown. The novel coronavirus is highly contagious, spreading fast from person to person. Lockdown makes social distancing effective; prohibiting human to human contact at the highest level possible. This social distancing helps a lot in containing the spread of the disease.

But at the same time, we cannot imagine continuing lockdown for a long time, because it has directly affected us in many ways.

• On The Economy

A countrywide lockdown isn’t good for the economy and is a setback for the economic growth and development of the nation. With transport suspended, railways and road transport agencies suffer losses to the tunes of crores. Small businesses and daily wage laborers are the most affected. Our GDP is going in negative decimals which is -9.6% this year and it is really a matter of fear because it will directly cause inflation.

• On Pollution Level

This is a significant positive impact of the lockdown. With all types of transport being suspended and also the people being forbidden from roaming unnecessarily, the air quality index improves drastically. The change was felt within a day or two of the lockdown.

• On Emergency Services

Lockdown was good for the emergency services and the personnel in a way that didn’t put additional stress on them. With no traffic and rush like usual days, their job becomes extremely easy and convenient.

Lockdown was very necessary for containing the coronavirus epidemic and preventing it from spreading to the community level. Despite its negative impacts; lockdown was very important. Even today although we have developed the vaccine there are many public places still closed. It is quite good in many ways.

Essay 3 (500 – 600 Words)

Lockdown is an emergency protocol imposed by the government that prohibits people from leaving their homes and venturing into public areas. In the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic spread, several governments across the globe have imposed lockdown in their respective jurisdiction, to prevent the disease from spreading further. The government of India also imposed a countrywide lockdown from midnight of 25th March and followed up to 4 months in every state and further different states followed as per the COVID cases in their states.

Why Is The Lockdown Necessary?

Ever since the coronavirus disease was first reported in China in November 2019 it affected millions of people globally. The disease is highly contagious and spreads at an unprecedented rate as never witnessed before.

The motive of a lockdown is to implement social distancing, preventing people from socializing and unnecessary gathering, so that to prevent the spread of disease from one person to another.

Effects of Lockdown

Lockdown wasn’t easy and was quite harsh experience for daily wage laborers, small businesses, and marginalized sections. These people were devoid of their livelihood and with less saving, find the lockdown financially crippling. That been said; lockdown is still necessary to save lives.

People with permanent employment, usually have the opportunity of working from home and are least affected by the lockdown. Suspension of all modes of transport for the common public caused inconvenience during this period.

Local administration relaxed the lockdown for a couple of hours every day to let people buy the necessary groceries and do other works. However, despite the relaxation people were not allowed to gather in large numbers, roam unnecessarily, and Necessary government offices and emergency services like municipalities, hospitals, police, etc. worked as usual.

Solidarity in Lockdown

Though the lockdown in India is harsh on marginalized sections of the society; people from different walks of life and several organizations have come forward for help. As soon as the lockdown was imposed, many prominent film producers, actors, and business houses have paid thousands of crore of rupees as donation to the Prime Minister Relief Fund. This money was used to be spending on food and providing monetary help to the poor during the lockdown.

Government officers distributed food packages, making sure that no person is left without food in the lockdown phase.

People of India have also displayed a great amount of respect for their emergency services personnel and medical professionals by clapping and celebrating within the premises of their own houses.

Apart from this lockdown today India is second in the list of most affected countries in the world. Lockdown saved us from community spread in India. The vaccine has been developed and soon it will be on the market. Still, some public places, schools, theatres are still closed and it is necessary until and unless all of us get the vaccine.

Lockdown is necessary to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease. It is imperative that we should be strict with the guidelines of lockdown for our own health and safety. The lockdown has been resumed but still, there are some public places under lockdown. Follow the guidelines and cooperate to stay safe and also keep others safe in this epidemic.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions on Lockdown

Ans . Lockdown is the policy that restricts the movement of people and states them to stay in one place.

Ans . The national emergency lockdown in India was implemented for the first time on the 25th of March, 2020.

Ans . The movement of people was restricted in the Covid-19 lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 infection.

Ans . Rajasthan was the first state in India to implement lockdown during Covid-19 phase 1.

Ans . Red zones are the areas that are highly infected.

Ans . The first lockdown was implemented by China in Wuhan on 23rd January 2020.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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'RNC on lockdown': Hazmat team reportedly rushes to GOP's D.C. headquarters

Kathleen Culliton

Kathleen culliton is raw story's assistant managing editor. she's been covering local and national news for more than a decade for outlets that include the new york post, al jazeera, dnainfo new york, bustle, the new york daily news, wnyc, ny1, city limits and the new york city patch. kathleen is a proud alumna of the cuny graduate school of journalism. here's a shocker; she is from new york city. .

The Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington D.C. was on lockdown Wednesday morning as hazmat teams rushed to the building, according to multiple reports.

The cause of the lockdown at 310 First Street SE Wednesday morning was not immediately revealed by NBC reporter Dasha Burns and the Daily Mail , among the first to report the situation.

"RNC HQ in DC is under lockdown until further notice," Burns told her followers. "Hazmat team is on site sources tell me."

ALSO READ: Trump campaign allegedly took ‘excessive’ contributions by the nickel and dime

U.S. Capitol Police alerted Congress that a 'suspicious substance' was under investigation , according to the Daily Mail.

According to the news outlet, a police states: 'Staff and other personnel are directed to AVOID THIS AREA until further notice.'

UPDATE: Officials gave the all clear after investigating a hazardous substance, Fox News correspondent Chad Pergram said just before 9:30 a.m.

Stories Chosen For You

Should trump be allowed to run for office, trump shamed for deluge of 'punts' that make policy 'remarkably unclear'.

Donald Trump frequently repeats that he intends to "look into it" when asked about a specific policy — now he's punted so many time his stance on multiple issues is "remarkably unclear," a Washington Post columnist wrote.

Trump spoke to one local news affiliate this week, where he claimed he was looking into a plan to restrict contraception for women . He has since tried to walk it back, but such flubs might be why Trump is dodging questions on policy positions, Aaron Blake wrote.

The columnist crafted a list of the issues he said the former president has now "punted' on.

Read Also: The backlash against Dobbs could do more than defeat Trump

In April, Trump was asked about the abortion drug mifepristone, which right-wingers are trying to have banned. He appeared to have a secret plan about it, that he explained people don't yet need to know.

“Well, I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to explain. I’m not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I’ll be releasing it probably over the next week," he told TIME in April. The views have yet to be revealed.

One of the ways a potential ban has been sidestepped has been by having the medication made available through the mail. Republicans have figured out a way around that too, using The Comstock Act. They're working to ban both mifepristone and contraception from being sent through the mail.

“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days," said Trump in the TIME interview. The reporter asked Trump about it again 15 days later. "Yeah, I have a big statement on that. I feel very strongly about it. I actually think it’s a very important issue," Blake wrote.

"I’ll be doing it over the next week or two," he said.

On Wednesday, 25 days had passed.

On a federal abortion ban, Trump said it would never happen without 60 votes in the Senate, so he has decided to fudge taking a position on it, Blake wrote.

When it comes to the specifics, such as the belief that an embryo is a human, Trump wants nothing to do with it. Instead of answering where he stands or what kind of judges he would nominate, he said he'd just leave it up to the states.

But his party members have discussed punishing women or imprisoning them for abortion. Trump even went so far as to say, "There has to be some form of punishment " because it is a "very serious problem."

"For the women?" then host Chris Matthews asked Trump.

"Yes," Trump agreed.

"Many of his punts involve reproductive rights, but not all. Trump will often promise a position shortly, then never provide one," Blake wrote.

Among other issues he lists are Ukraine aid and whether Trump would pardon himself if convicted.

See Blake's full list here.

Jack Smith's team tells Judge Cannon Trump co-defendant's motion to dismiss is 'garbage'

A prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith's team has told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that a motion to dismiss a classified documents case involving Donald Trump was "garbage."

According to The Associated Press, Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump's personal valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta, accused Smith of targeting his client with a vindictive prosecution .

Both Nauta and Trump have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the mishandling of classified documents.

Woodward "conceded to Cannon that there was insufficient evidence to dismiss the indictment on grounds of vindictive prosecution. But he said there was enough for her to order prosecutors to turn over all communication they had about Nauta to see if hostility existed," the AP reported.

ALSO READ: Why Trump’s strength is illusory

"There was a campaign to get Mr. Nauta to cooperate in the first federal prosecution of a former president of the United States, and when he refused, they prosecuted him," Woodward reportedly said. "That's a violation of his constitutional rights."

Prosecutor David Harbach, however, called the argument "garbage."

"There is not a single bit of evidence of animus toward Mr. Nauta," he told Cannon.

Attorneys for Trump were also expected to argue to dismiss the case at the hearing.

'They hate the truth': Outrage erupts over House Republicans' latest pro-Trump move

Outrage erupted among lawmakers and political spectators Wednesday when House Republicans demanded a Democrat's summary of the charges facing former President Donald Trump be stricken from the official record.

Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) lashed out at Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) as he detailed the many charges facing the former president and questioned House Republicans own rhetoric on the matter.

"[Trump is] charged with stealing classified information and a jury has already found him liable for rape and a civil court," McGovern said. "And yet, in this Republican controlled House, it's okay to talk about the trial but you have to call it a sham."

“I demand that his words be taken down," interrupted Houchin.

According to Fox News correspondent Chad Pergram , the House obliged.

"This was a big parliamentary kerfuffle which consumed more than an hour," the correspondent noted.

ALSO READ: What Trump's weird WWE Hall of Fame speech tells us about his presidential debate strategy

McGovern's words may have been removed from the House record but they were almost immediately republished and applauded on social media.

Said Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA)on X , "Everything @RepMcGovern said is objectively true."

Meanwhile, Republicans who challenged McGovern's statement of fact were met with scorn.

"Next time a Republican talks about the sham trial or rigged charges, Dems can move to take their words down," replied X user Skyleigh Heinen-Uhrich .

"You ARE allowed to physically insult each other," quipped writer Ben Siemon , "but you are NOT allowed to state basic facts about the former president without any spin."

Rhetoric expert Jennifer Mercieca challenged the House Republicans on their definition of a single word.

"It's indecorous to say these truths?" she asked . "I think it's indecorous to nominate someone for president who is credibly accused of these crimes, who is an adjudicated rapist, who has been found guilty of fraudulent business practices (more than once)."

X user Wu Tang is for the Children said, "They hate the truth….not one lie was read."

Read McGovern's full statement below or click here .

'Need the Senate': Republicans brush off worries of anti-Trump GOPer being an 'irritant'

Here's why trump won’t double down on 'united reich', nfl drafts capitol hill staffers for lobbying retreat.

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Stephanie Blog

• The Benefits of Bilingual Education: Why You Should Learn a Second Language

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/unknown-person-writing-on-chalkboard-jBSTNenQxok  

Bilingualism, or the ability to speak two languages, is considered one of the most beneficial skills a person can acquire. It can benefit you in your day-to-day life, for example, when you’re interacting with various people from all across the globe. It’s highly sought-after in the labor market. And it also has the potential to stimulate the development of your brain and cognitive abilities.

We all have heard about the different benefits of bilingual education. But are they really that huge to make you start learning a foreign language ASAP? Let’s see what the real benefits of bilingualism are and figure out whether you should choose this path for you or not!

The Rise of Bilingualism

Before we start exploring the real advantages of learning a foreign language, it’s important to understand the overall state of bilingualism in the modern world.

Although bilingualism has always been a thing, the number of its representatives has been changing a lot through the past decades. According to available data, the number of two-language speakers in 1980 was only 10.68%. In 2018, this number was 20.55%. But now, it has skyrocketed more than ever – the latest data shows that the number of bilingual people is around 3.3 billion, which makes up as much as 43% of the world’s population.

The increase in second-language acquisition can be linked to numerous reasons. First of all, greater openness of borders and more extensive opportunities for traveling, studying, working, and living abroad might urge more people around the world to learn a foreign language. This might be an especially big purpose for young people who have the ambition to see the world and experience education abroad. They often engage in bilingual education while still in school. They find resources to help them maintain high grades, such as EssayPro , and use their free time to boost their foreign language proficiency. And then, they unlock more chances to travel or participate in exciting opportunities, such as studying or volunteering abroad.

The Covid-19 pandemic might be another reason. During the global lockdown, many people experienced remote education and work for the first time in their lives, and surveys revealed that the majority of these people got used to it so much that they wanted to continue working or studying remotely after the lockdown. Respectively, this fact opened more international opportunities to students and professionals across the world. But in order to capture them, they might’ve needed to acquire a second language. So this might be another factor stimulating the rise of bilingualism in the world.

7 Reasons to Learn a Foreign Language

In 2024, the popularity of bilingual education is at its peak. So, if you haven’t acquired a second language yet, now is just the right time to get started with it.

But why exactly do you have to bother about it? Here is an overview of the top reasons to start learning a foreign language:

1. Brain Stimulation

Multiple studies confirm that learning a foreign language boosts gray matter. In the process of acquiring a language, learners are exposed to large volumes of new information and rules. This is a massive challenge for your brain. It trains your brain in a similar way to how we train our muscles.

There is more. Science says that using our native language engages the left side of the brain. Yet, using a second language actually engages and stimulates both hemispheres. Hence, learning a foreign language doubles the power of your brain.

2. Enhanced Attention Span

In recent years, the average attention span in humans has been reported to lower rapidly. This led to many negative consequences on people’s ability to learn, work, and generally stay concentrated on something.

Bilingualism solves this problem. According to scientists, bilingual people get used to quickly switching between different languages. This improves the brain’s ability to concentrate and enhances attention span.

3. Greater Creativity

Second-language education consists not only of learning grammar and rules. It also consists of exploring the foreign language’s history, culture, and customs. This enables you to look at the world from a variety of perspectives and unleash your creative potential.

4. Improved Inclusivity and Tolerance

Since learning a foreign language often involves getting familiar with new cultures, it can also make you a more open-minded person. It can help you develop less prejudice. As a result, you’ll have more positive attitudes toward different people. And this is incredibly important in our multicultural world.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-black-shirt-sitting-beside-woman-in-gray-shirt-cZISY8ai2iA  

5. Improved Skills

Learning a foreign language requires a broad set of skills. These include:

• Active listening;
• Information retention;
• Communication;
• Critical thinking;
• Self-organization;
• Time management;
• Multitasking;
• And many others.

Bilingual people easily develop and strengthen all these skills.

6. Better Academic and Professional Performance

By teaching you a wealth of skills and stimulating your brain, second-language acquisition can actually make you a better student and/or professional. According to studies, bilingual students tend to demonstrate greater academic achievement. Also, they tend to succeed more in extracurriculars and other spheres of their lives. Most importantly, they are proven to have broader career opportunities because employers value foreign language knowledge a lot.

7. Fewer Risks of an Early Cognitive Decline

Bilingualism is proven to enhance one’s cognitive function. Hence, it can mitigate the risk of early cognitive impairments. Studies confirm that bilingual people tend to have a more natural and positive cognitive aging. They experience a decline in their cognitive abilities on average four and a half years later compared to people who only speak one language.

The Bottom Line

Bilingualism isn’t a new concept. It has been around for ages and has always shown numerous benefits. However, now, we can see it rise with more power than ever. And there are quite a few reasons for that.

As you now know, learning a second language helps you:

• Strengthen your brain;
• Improve concentration;
• Unleash creativity;
• Promote positive attitudes;
• Strengthen your skills;
• Improve your performance in school, at work, and in other spheres of your life;
• Minimize cognitive decline.

What’s more, knowing a foreign language is also linked to greater self-confidence. So, if you have been wondering whether you should learn a new language or not, now you have all the reasons to do so!

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Run Over Three Times, the Author Survived to Tell the Story

By Lilah Ramzi

Six years ago today, Naseem Rochette was crossing the street in her suburban hometown in New Jersey. Her husband was waiting for her on the other side, and watched in horror as she was struck by a car and then run over multiple times. The extreme accident, which left her with several injuries, though no broken bones or internal bleeding, was something Rochette intended to find purpose in. Rochette considered herself lucky.

In the time since the accident, Rochette, a Google alum and a sales leader at Microsoft, has shared her story. Turning the lemons life had handed her into lemonade, Rochette wrote The Unexpected Benefits of Being Run Over , out now.

In the book, Rochette recounts the accident, sharing her life as it led up to that faithful day—she grew up with Indian parents in New Jersey in the 1970s and is now raising three children of her own in her home state. A busy life as a full-time working mom zig-zagging in and out of Manhattan came to a halt when Rochette was forced to slow down and focus on healing. With an unshakable optimism (the book's title says it all), Rochette's book ends with a chapter she calls "The Sermon”—a neat list of 10 takeaways she hopes to impart to readers.

Since the accident, Rochette has reclaimed the day of May 21 in what she calls “Unbreakable Day.” On this Unbreakable Day, a Q&A with Rochette:

What inspired you to write "The Unexpected Benefits of Being Run Over" ?

To be honest, writing a memoir was not something I wanted to do—I didn't think my life was very remarkable—and I would have preferred to just publish the 10 things I learned from being run over—the "my sermon" section. However, I realized that I needed to share the details of my life and the background of my transformation to make my lessons meaningful and authentic. It’s hard to appreciate milestones and victories without knowing where the journey started.

How soon after your incident did you start writing your story?

On that first evening at the hospital, after we all realized I had survived being hit by a car and run over three times, the medical staff kept saying it was a miracle—and I had to do something good with it. I had no idea what that meant, and, to be honest, that really stressed me out! However, I did decide early on that I wanted to do something. I started writing down the things I learned. It was only when we were in COVID-19 lockdown when many people were living through a kind of “Unbreakable Day” that I thought some of my insights could help others.

By Hannah Jackson

By Hannah Coates

By Daniel Rodgers

How have you maintained an optimism throughout this experience?

I have always preferred joy and optimism—it takes much more energy to be pessimistic!—and I didn't want to live a life of crying, pain, struggle, and difficulty. I wanted a happy story, and I was set on finding that. It was hard and sometimes I lost hope, but over the years, I learned that we can shape our own stories—even in the toughest times. That belief kept me going then and still does. I still try to remember who I want to be—and have even gotten some tattoos to remind myself of what I went through and what I learned. Lessons I was fortunate to learn and never want to forget.

How the writing process was an aid in your recovery?

It was an intriguing process to write the book. After I committed to it, I finished most of it in a matter of weeks. The hardest part was the contextual details that took almost two years—because they were very personal, and I had to be emotionally ready to delve into my life—my past and even my present. Deciding what was interesting and relevant to the story required a lot of introspection (writing and revising!), especially because I wanted my words to express that I am sharing what I learned–not pretending to be “enlightened”—just hoping to help others.

What's been the most surprising outcome of this journey?

I never expected my book to reach anyone beyond my close friends and family, so the book's success was a huge surprise. Moreover, the diversity of people who have contacted me—who have even made changes in their lives because they felt encouraged and motivated by my story—was beyond my wildest dreams. I have heard from 80-year-old grandmothers in Florida, teenagers with social anxiety, and executives in their 40s-50s who have never spoken about their challenges. I am amazed and delighted by how much sharing my difficulties, achievements, and insights has helped others. I even give keynotes, run workshops, and offer life coaching now because people want to connect and apply these messages and learnings to their lives and careers.

What has been the feedback of sharing your story?

Every time I share the story, or hear from a reader, or speak at an event, I am amazed by how many strangers approach me and tell me their stories and how they feel empowered or encouraged by mine. Sometimes they will follow up weeks later and tell me they are still reflecting on the story, and it has improved them for the better, made them more resilient and compassionate to themselves and others. That feedback is especially meaningful because the story is very personal; the details I reveal about my life are private, and knowing that my friends, colleagues, and strangers have so much more insight into me than I have into them feels quite odd.

What are your future plans?

Now that I have shared my story publicly—I am literally an open book!—I want to keep helping people feel stronger, more confident in who they are and in shaping their story. So right now, that means continuing to give talks and keynotes, run workshops, and do more life coaching. Sharing our journeys, accepting help, being kind to ourselves; these have not been the signs of strength that most of us have been raised with. It's a new aspect of strength and a new skill for people to develop—and I enjoy helping them do that both in their personal lives and their careers.

Tell us about what you've dubbed as Unbreakable Day.

It is based on the art, the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, and appreciating our cracks— difficulties, traumas—as part of our unique journey. Not something to hide or judge. Just recognition that we all have cracks of some kind. Then, once we can accept our cracks, hopefully we look at our experiences and appreciate the resilience it took to overcome those hard moments, to put the pieces back together. Even if we are still on the journey—we can celebrate progress. Recovery doesn't happen in a day, and the small wins deserve recognition. The people who help us achieve those wins deserve recognition. Appreciate the insights that our challenges give us; appreciate the wonderful people and communities that help us move forward. That is what Unbreakable Day is about, and we are all Unbreakable if we choose to be.

May 21 marks the anniversary of the accident. Can you share how you intended to mark the moment?

We rejoice! This year, we will just spend time with family, but in the previous years, we had a big party—and I love ’70s fashion, so we theme it Staying Alive, and I get to wear some extra fabulous halters and bell bottoms! But whatever we do, we also pause to appreciate, thank ourselves for what we have survived, and thank the people who have supported us through our hard times. Many people have told me they celebrate Unbreakable Day, too, and I'm glad that a traumatic accident led to something so wonderful. It's really just a day to celebrate our journeys and remember that we have the power to create our own stories…and that doesn't mean those stories won't have difficulties and hard moments; we just get to choose if those moments break us or if they are just cracks in our unbreakable journey.

Two decades of studies suggest health benefits associated with plant-based diets

But researchers caution against broad diet recommendations until remaining knowledge gaps are filled.

Vegetarian and vegan diets are generally associated with better status on various medical factors linked to cardiovascular health and cancer risk, as well as lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and death, according to a new review of 49 previously published papers. Angelo Capodici and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 15, 2024.

Prior studies have linked certain diets with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. A diet that is poor in plant products and rich in meat, refined grains, sugar, and salt is associated with higher risk of death. Reducing consumption of animal-based products in favor of plant-based products has been suggested to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. However, the overall benefits of such diets remain unclear.

To deepen understanding of the potential benefits of plant-based diets, Capodici and colleagues reviewed 48 papers published between January 2000 and June 2023 that themselves compiled evidence from multiple prior studies. Following an "umbrella" review approach, they extracted and analyzed data from the 48 papers on links between plant-based diets, cardiovascular health, and cancer risk.

Their analysis showed that, overall, vegetarian and vegan diets have a robust statistical association with better health status on a number of risk factors associated with cardiometabolic diseases, cancer, and mortality, such as blood pressure, management of blood sugar, and body mass index. Such diets are associated with reduced risk of ischemic heart disease, gastrointestinal and prostate cancer, and death from cardiovascular disease.

However, among pregnant women specifically, those with vegetarian diets faced no difference in their risk of gestational diabetes and hypertension compared to those on non-plant-based diets.

Overall, these findings suggest that plant-based diets are associated with significant health benefits. However, the researchers note, the statistical strength of this association is significantly limited by the many differences between past studies in terms of the specific diet regimens followed, patient demographics, study duration, and other factors. Moreover, some plant-based diets may introduce vitamin and mineral deficiencies for some people. Thus, the researchers caution against large-scale recommendation of plant-based diets until more research is completed.

The authors add: "Our study evaluates the different impacts of animal-free diets for cardiovascular health and cancer risk showing how a vegetarian diet can be beneficial to human health and be one of the effective preventive strategies for the two most impactful chronic diseases on human health in the 21st century."

• Diet and Weight Loss
• Diseases and Conditions
• Colon Cancer
• Endangered Plants
• Veterinary Medicine
• Colorectal cancer
• Ovarian cancer
• Polyphenol antioxidant
• Stomach cancer
• Cervical cancer
• HPV vaccine
• Breast cancer

Story Source:

Materials provided by PLOS . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Angelo Capodici, Gabriele Mocciaro, Davide Gori, Matthew J. Landry, Alice Masini, Francesco Sanmarchi, Matteo Fiore, Angela Andrea Coa, Gisele Castagna, Christopher D. Gardner, Federica Guaraldi. Cardiovascular health and cancer risk associated with plant based diets: An umbrella review . PLOS ONE , 2024; 19 (5): e0300711 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300711

Cite This Page :

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Impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on mental health of children and adolescents: A narrative review with recommendations ☆

Shweta singh.

a Additional Professor, Department of Psychiatry, KGMU Lucknow. India

Deblina Roy

b Psychiatric Nursing, Department of Psychiatry, King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India

Krittika Sinha

c Department of Psychiatry, King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India

Sheeba Parveen

Ginni sharma, gunjan joshi, associated data.

COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has brought about a sense of fear and anxiety around the globe. This phenomenon has led to short term as well as long term psychosocial and mental health implications for children and adolescents. The quality and magnitude of impact on minors is determined by many vulnerability factors like developmental age, educational status, pre-existing mental health condition, being economically underprivileged or being quarantined due to infection or fear of infection.

This paper is aimed at narratively reviewing various articles related to mental-health aspects of children and adolescents impacted by COVID-19 pandemic and enforcement of nationwide or regional lockdowns to prevent further spread of infection.

Methodology

We conducted a review and collected articles and advisories on mental health aspects of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. We selected articles and thematically organized them. We put up their major findings under the thematic areas of impact on young children, school and college going students, children and adolescents with mental health challenges, economically underprivileged children, impact due to quarantine and separation from parents and the advisories of international organizations. We have also provided recommendations to the above.

There is a pressing need for planning longitudinal and developmental studies, and implementing evidence based elaborative plan of action to cater to the psycho social and mental health needs of the vulnerable children and adolescents during pandemic as well as post pandemic. There is a need to ameliorate children and adolescents’ access to mental health support services geared towards providing measures for developing healthy coping mechanisms during the current crisis. For this innovative child and adolescent mental health policies policies with direct and digital collaborative networks of psychiatrists, psychologists, paediatricians, and community volunteers are deemed necessary.

1. Introduction

There are more than 2.2 billion children in the world who constitute approximately 28% of the world's population. Those aged between 10 to 19 years make up 16 % of the world's population ( UNICEF, 2019 ). COVID-19 has impacted the lives of people around the world including children and adolescents in an unprecedented manner. Throughout the world, an essential modus of prevention from COVID- 19 infection has been isolation and social distancing strategies to protect from the risk of infection ( Shen et al., 2020 ). On these grounds, since January, 2020, various countries started implementing regional and national containment measures or lockdowns. In this backdrop one of the principal measures taken during lockdown has been closure of schools, educational institutes and activity areas. These inexorable circumstances which are beyond normal experience, lead to stress, anxiety and a feeling of helplessness in all.

It has been indicated that compared to adults, this pandemic may continue to have increased long term adverse consequences on children and adolescents ( Shen et al., 2020 ). The nature and extent of impact on this age group depend on many vulnerability factors such as the developmental age, current educational status, having special needs, pre-existing mental health condition, being economically under privileged and child/ parent being quarantined due to infection or fear of infection. The following sections discuss about findings of studies on mental-health aspects of children and adolescents impacted by COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns being implemented at national or regional levels to prevent further spread of infection.

2. Material and methods

We searched the electronic data bases of MEDLINE through PubMed, Cochrane Library, Science-direct and Google Scholar databases, from January,2020 till June,2020. We carried out the search with the following methods like, MeSH or free text terms and Boolean operators were employed for PubMed; COVID-19 and Children [All Fields] OR (Children and COVID-19 effects [Terms] OR & Psychological effects of COVID-19 on children &Quot;[All Fields] OR (&Quot; COVID effects on children &Quot;[All Fields] AND &quot; &Quot;[All Fields]) OR effects on Children of COVID-19 &quot; Psychological effects of COVID, Children &quot;[All Fields]) OR (&quot;COVID-19 and children &quot;[MeSH Terms] OR &quot; Psychological effects of COVID-19, Children &quot;[All Fields]. This search strategy and terms were modified for other databases as appropriate. The searches were done by five independent reviewers. A manual search was also conducted of the references of the related articles to gather information about the relevant studies. Initial PubMed search with the term with “ COVID-19 in children” showed only 12 results. Among these, only four articles were related to “Psychological effects of COVID in children”. Therefore in order to make the review more comprehensive and informative, we also included studies that reported the effect on older children and impact of COVID1-19 on their lives. This was done keeping in mind the varied terminologies used to describe the phenomenon of ‘Children and COVID-19”. After using the above strategy, our search showed 112 results. Only articles in English language peer reviewed journals were included. Grey literature such as conference proceedings were not included due to possibility of insufficient information. We included case studies and review articles and Advisories by the WHO (World Health Organization), APA (American Psychiatric Association) and NHS (National Health Services) and Government of India Ministry of Health. Based on these inclusion criteria we included 22 articles. Three independent authors participated in study selection and all authors reached a consensus on the studies to be included. Being a narrative review, we did not attempt computation of effect sizes or do a risk of bias assessment for included papers.

The studies included were categorized under eight headings divided in various thematic sections and discussed with studies and reports found. The data is qualitatively analysed and reported in the paper. A summary of the papers included in this narrative review is presented in Table 1 .

Articles on mental health and psycho-social aspects of COVID among children and adolescents.

2.1. Impact on young children

Stress starts showing its adverse effect on a child even before he or she is born. During stress, parents particularly pregnant mothers are in a psychologically vulnerable state to experience anxiety and depression which is biologically linked to the wellbeing of the foetus ( Biaggi et al., 2016 ; Kinsella and Monk, 2009 ). In young children and adolescents the pandemic and lockdown have a greater impact on emotional and social development compared to that in the grown-ups. In one of the preliminary studies during the on-going pandemic, it was found younger children (3-6years old) were more likely to manifest symptoms of clinginess and the fear of family members being infected than older children (6-18 years old). Whereas, the older children were more likely to experience inattention and were persistently inquiring regarding COVID-19. Although, severe psychological conditions of increased irritability, inattention and clinging behaviour were revealed by all children irrespective of their age groups ( Viner et al., 2020a ). Based on the questionnaires completed by the parents, findings reveal that children felt uncertain, fearful and isolated during current times. It was also shown that children experienced disturbed sleep, nightmares, poor appetite, agitation, inattention and separation related anxiety ( Jiao et al., 2020 ).

2.2. Impact on school and college going students

Globally, the pre-lockdown learning of children and adolescents predominantly involved one-to-one interaction with their mentors and peer groups. Unfortunately, the nationwide closures of schools and colleges have negatively impacted over 91% of the world's student population ( Lee, 2020 ). The home confinement of children and adolescents is associated with uncertainty and anxiety which is attributable to disruption in their education, physical activities and opportunities for socialization ( Jiao et al., 2020 ). Absence of structured setting of the school for a long duration result in disruption in routine, boredom and lack of innovative ideas for engaging in various academic and extracurricular activities. Some children have expressed lower levels of affect for not being able to play outdoors, not meeting friends and not engaging in the in-person school activities ( Lee, 2020 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Zhai and Du, 2020 ). These children have become more clingy, attention seeking and more dependent on their parents due to the long term shift in their routine. It is presumed that children might resist going to school after the lockdown gets over and may face difficulty in establishing rapport with their mentors after the schools reopen. Consequently, the constraint of movement imposed on them can have a long term negative effect on their overall psychological wellbeing ( Lee, 2020 ).

A study found that older adolescents and youth are anxious regarding cancellation of examinations, exchange programs and academic events ( Lee, 2020 ). Current studies related to COVID-19 demonstrate that school shut downs in isolation  prevent about 2-4% additional deaths which is quite less if compared to usage of other measures of social distancing. Moreover, they suggest to the policy makers that other less disrupting social distancing strategies should be followed by schools if social distancing is recommended for a long duration ( Lee, 2020 ; Sahu, 2020 ; Viner et al., 2020a ). However, in current circumstances, it is controversial whether complete closure of school and colleges is warranted for a prolonged period.

It has been reported that panic buying in times of distress indicate an instinctual survival behaviour ( Arafat et al., 2020 ). In present pandemic era there has been a rise in the hoarding behaviour among the teenagers ( Oosterhoff et al., 2020a ). It is also found that among youth social distancing is viewed primarily as a social responsibility and it is followed more sincerely if motivated by prosocial reasons to prevent others from getting sick (Oosterhoff et al., 2020a). Further, due to prolonged confinement at home children's increased use of internet and social media predisposes them to use internet compulsively, access objectionable content and also increases their vulnerability for getting bullied or abused ( Cooper, 2020 ; UNICEF, 2020b ). Worst of all, during lockdown when schools, when legal and preventative services do not functioning fully, children are rarely in a position to report violence, abuse and harm if they themselves have abusive homes.

2.3. Impact on children and adolescents having special needs

There are about 1 in every 6 children within the age group of 2-8 years who have some or the other neurodevelopmental, behavioural or emotional difficulty ( CDC, 2019 ). These children with special needs [autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, learning disability, developmental delays and other behavioural and emotional difficulties] encounter challenges during the current pandemic and lockdown ( CDC, 2019 ). They have intolerance for uncertainty and there is an aggravation in the symptoms due to the enforced restrictions and unfriendly environment which does not correspond with their regular routine. Also, they face difficulties in following instructions, understanding the complexity of the pandemic situation and doing their own work independently. With the closure of special schools and day care centres these children lack access to resource material, peer group interactions and opportunities of learning and developing important social and behavioural skills in due time may lead to regression to the past behavior as they lose anchor in life, as a result of this their symptoms could relapse ( Lee, 2020 ). These conditions also trigger outburst of temper tantrums, and conflict between parents and adolescents. Although prior to the pandemic, these children had been facing difficulties even while attending special schools, but in due course they had learnt to develop a schedule to adhere to for most of the time of the day ( APA, 2020 ; Cortese et al., 2020 ; UNICEF, 2020a ). To cater to these challenges, it is difficult for parents to handle the challenged children and adolescents on their own, as they lack professional expertise and they mostly relied on schools and therapists to help them out ( Dalton et al., 2020 ).

Since every disorder is different, every child has different needs to be met. The children with autism find it very difficult to adapt to the changing environment. They become agitated and exasperated when anything is rearranged or shifted from its existing setup. They might show an increase in their behavioral problems and acts of self-harm. It is a huge challenge for parents to handle autistic children due to lockdown. The suspension of speech therapy and occupational therapy sessions could have a negative impact on their skill development and the achievement of the next milestone, as it is difficult for them to learn through online sessions ( UNICEF, 2020a ). The children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), struggle to make meaning of what is going around them from the cues they get from their caregivers. It is difficult for them to remain confined to a place and not to touch things, which might infect them.  Due to being confined to one place the chances of their hyperactivity increases along with heightened impulses and it becomes difficult for the caregivers to engage these children in meaningful activities ( Cortese et al., 2020 ).

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) among the children and adolescents is estimated to be of 0.25%–4% among children and adolescents ( CDC, 2019 ). Children with OCD are suspected to be one of the most affected ones by this pandemic.  Due to obsessions and compulsions related to contamination, hoarding, and somatic preoccupation, they are expected to experience heightened distress. Cleanliness is one key protective measure against the spread of COVID-19. According to United Nations’ policy guidelines to fight the infection one has to be careful about washing their hands six times a day, and whenever they touch anything ( APA, 2020 ; United Nations, 2020 ). The lockdown, which has made the healthy population distressed about possessing enough food and prevention related resources like masks and sanitizers, has made it worse for people with hoarding disorder ( APA, 2020 ; Mukherjee et al., 2020 )

2.4. Impact of lockdown on underprivileged children

Social inequality has been associated with the risk of developing mental health challenges. The pandemic and lockdown world has experienced global economic turn-down which has directly worsened the pre-existing social inequality. In developing countries, with the imposed lockdown, the underprivileged children face acute deprivation of nutrition and overall protection. The prolonged period of stress could have a long term negative impact on their development. For instance, in India, which has the largest child population in the world with 472 million children, the lockdown has significantly impacted 40 million children from poor families. These include children working on farms, fields in rural areas, children of migrants and street children ( Dalton et al., 2020 ; Rosenthal et al., 2020 ). An increasing number of poor and street children now have no source of income, making them a high risk population to face abuse and mental health issues with greater vulnerability and exposure to unfavorable economic, social and environmental circumstances ( Birla, 2019 ).

A home represents a source of security and safety in most families. However, for the poor and the underprivileged it is just the opposite. With the restriction of movement due to lockdown, these children have increased risk of being exploited and become victims of violence and abuse ( Cooper, 2020 ; United Nations, 2020 ).  The Deputy Director of ‘CHILDLINE 1098’ India, announced that India saw a 50 per cent increase in the calls received on helpline for children since the lockdown began ( PTI, 2020 ). This increase in rate is alarming and has made an increasing number of child victims in their own homes.

During the time of lockdown an increasing number of poor families have no source of daily wages which lead to frustration and feelings of helplessness. By the reason of displacement, the frustration and family conflict may manifest itself in the form of violence towards children. This can make the child more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and suicide ( Jiao et al., 2020 ; Petito et al., 2020 ; Solantaus et al., 2020 ) School closure coupled with economic adversity may force children and adolescents into child labour. Likewise, children without parents or guardians are more prone to exploitation ( United Nations, 2020 ).

In order to cover up the loss of education during lockdown, many schools have offered distance learning or online courses to students. However, this opportunity is not available to underprivileged children as a result of which they face a lack of stimulation and have no access to online resource material to study. A study pointed out that in underprivileged families, in comparison to boys, girls have decreased access to gadgets, this may diminish their involvement in digital platforms of  education ( McQuillan and Neill, 2009 ). Due to this gender inequality, increasing number of girls are prone to bear the consequences of school dropouts once the lockdown is lifted ( Cooper, 2020 ; PTI, 2020 ).

2.5. Impact due to quarantine and separation from parents

COVID-19 infection is expressed differently in children and adolescents. Yet the incidents of infection in the minors have been reported worldwide, which result in children being quarantined. Moreover, in many cases a single parent or both the parents are infected and quarantined. In either condition children are separated from their parents. Many countries have laid down strict quarantine policies as a measure to fight COVID-19 pandemic. Such as in China several adults, adolescents and children have been put in complete isolation to control the spread of infection. Although quarantining measures are for the benefit of the community at large, its psychological effects cannot be ignored ( Liu et al., 2020 ). The children who are in isolation require special attention as these children might be at risk of developing mental health problems due to grief caused by of parental separation. As during the formative years of life, the role of parents is very crucial, any disruption in the form of isolation from parents can have long term effects of perceived attachment of the child. It is found that separation from the primary caregivers can make a child more vulnerable and can pose a threat to a child's mental health ( Cooper, 2020 ; Jiao et al., 2020 ; Liu et al., 2020 ). The children may develop feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear of death, fear of parents’ death and fear of being isolated in the hospital which may have a very detrimental effect on their psychological development ( APA, 2020 ; CDC, 2019 ; Dalton et al., 2020 ). Children have emotionally pent up feelings of distress which may turn inwards into emotional fear or outwards towards acting out behavior ( Liu et al., 2020 ). They might feel separated or alone as they have limited knowledge and level of maturity to understand the implications of the current pandemic situation in their limited world.

2.6. Advisories of international organizations

With the objective of universal prevention and mental health promotion, the International organizations and advisory bodies have issued various guidelines taking into account the mental health needs of children during the COVID-19. They have suggested parents to interact constructively with the children by communicating with them about the current pandemic, according to their maturity level and their ability to comprehend the crisis. Parents should plan their children's tasks one at a time, involve them in various home activities, educate them about following hygiene habits and social distancing, engage in indoor play and creative activities. In addition to these activities, adolescents are advised to be involved in household chores and understand their social responsibilities ( WHO, 2020b ) .  Interventions supervised by adults can help them in understanding their concerns. The activities of children and adolescents should include more structure in home schooling activities. Children should be encouraged to socialize with their friends and classmates through digital forums under adult supervision ( WHO, 2020a ).

The advisory committees have also provided guidelines for managing children with special needs and neurodevelopmental disorders ( UNICEF, 2020a , 2020b; WHO, 2020a ) . The children prone to risk for trauma and heightened anxiety. The children need early identification prompt management involving the parents and experts to prevent long term mental health morbidity.

2.7. Recommendations

It is imperative to plan strategies to enhance children and adolescent's access to mental health services during and after the current crisis. For this direct and digital collaborative network of various stakeholders is required. Recommendations for ensuring mental well-being of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown and the role of parents, teachers, pediatricians, community volunteers, the health system and policy makers are being discussed. In addition a brief summary of the roles is given in Table 2 .

Mental health care of children and adolescents by various support systems.

2.8. Role of Parents

In the times of paramount stress and uncertainty, a secure family environment which the parents can provide is a strong protective factor ( Schofield et al., 2013 ). There is evidence to show that parental practices and coping measures affect the children's post disaster mental health ( Cobham et al., 2016 ). Parents need to respond to the needs of their children based on the developmental phase of the child is being discussed below:

2.9. Young children

• 1. Compared to adolescents, younger children demand  more attention  of their parents They need their parents’ physical presence and need to engage in more indoor play related activities with them. Parents should devote time to provide the child with undivided, positive attention and reassurance.
• 2. With the aim to  increase children's awareness about COVID 19,  it is crucial for parents to communicate with  young children in an age appropriate manner by using simple terminologies about COVID-19. Children need to be given fact based information with the help of presentations and video material provided by authorized international organizations like WHO and UNICEF or government resources which have been tailor made especially for children.
• 3. To  alleviate the anx iety of children regarding the current uncertain situation ( Wang et al., 2020 ), children's exposure to news should be limited and be through fact based neutral news channels only. The tabloid news should be avoided by all means.
• 4. The parents are recommended to  model appropriate preventive measures and coping mechanisms  which the family as a team and children individually are motivated to follow. For this use of reminders through phone may also be used.
• 5. Efforts should be made so that a  consistent routine is  followed by the child, with enough opportunities to play, read, rest and engage in physical activity. It is recommended that family plays board games and engages in indoor sports activities with the child to avoid longer durations of video games. Parents should ensure that particularly the bedtime of a child is consistent. It is possible that before the bed time children may need some more time and attention.
• 6. Focus should be on the  ‘good behaviour’  more than ‘bad behaviour’ of a child. Parents must tell more about options regarding what to do rather than what  not to do. Provide more praise and social reinforcements to children compared to material reinforcements.
• 7. It is quite possible that parents observe some amount of change in the behavior in children during the times of a pandemic. If the  behavior problems  are minor and not harmful for children and others, parents should consider ignoring and stop paying attention to them, this may lead to decrease in the recurrence in behavior and would also help in giving space to each other.

2.10. Adolescents

Apart from areas discussed above, certain areas which need especial focus in the phase of adolescence, are being described below:

• 1. Parents are the best ‘role model’  for children and home is practically the best place to learn the ‘life skills’. Hence, this is the best time for parents to model the most important life skills i.e. coping with stress, coping with emotions, and problem-solving with their children. Due to the cancellation of exams handle disappointments and uncertainties more positively. For each disappointment and uncertainty, there should be an alternative. Moreover, to inculcate a sense of control in adolescents whenever possible, parents can include adolescents in the decision-making process especially in matters related to them.
• 2. Adolescents are expected to have better  knowledge about COVID 19  compared to young children. Therefore, communication has to be more open and non-directive. On the other hand, judgmental statements about adolescents should be avoided.
• 3. This is an opportunity for older children to  learn responsibility, accountability, involvement, and collaboration.  By taking some responsibilities at home on an everyday basis, for instance maintenance of their belongings and utility items. They can learn some of the skills including cooking, managing money matters, learning first aid, organizing their room, contributing to managing chores like laundry, cleaning and cooking.
• 4. Excessive internet  use e.g. internet surfing related to COVID-19 should be avoided as it results in anxiety. Similarly, excessive and irresponsible use of social media or internet gaming should be cautioned against. Negotiations with adolescents to limit their time and internet-based activities are recommended. More non-gadget related in door activities and games are to be encouraged.
• 5. In such conditions taking up  creative pursuits  like art, music, dance and others can help to manage mental health and well-being for everyone. Inculcating self-driven reading by making them select books of their choice and discussing about them helps in adolescent development.
• 6. Adolescence is a phase of enthusiasm and risk-taking, hence some may feel invincible and  try not to follow guidelines  related to distancing and personal hygiene. This has to be addressed with adolescents assertively.
• 7. It is crucial to value the  peer support system  of the adolescents. Parents should encourage adolescents who are introverts to keep in touch with their peers and communicate with them about their feelings and common problems they face. This may also lead a way for appropriate problem-solving.
• 8. It is advised to  parents to take care of their own mental health  needs and try to cope with stress adaptively.

2.11. Role of school teachers/school counselors

In the present times when most schools and colleges are organizing online academic activities, teachers are in regular touch with students, and therefore are in a position to play a critical role in the promotion of psychological well being among youngsters. Their role during COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown are as follows:

• 1. Teachers can devote some time related to  educating about COVID-19  and preventive health behavior by using the guidelines of the international organizations, according to the maturity level of the students. They can explain to the students about the need to act with responsibility during the current pandemic. They can model and enact through their behavior the preventive measures.
• 2. They can  conduct creative online  academic and non-academic sessions by making their classes more interactive, engaging students in the form of quizzes, puzzles, small competitions, and giving more creative home assignments to break the monotony of the online classes. Standard educational material can be used. For instance, UNESCO has offered many online educational sources (UNESCO, 2020)
• 3. Teachers have a role to play in the  promotion of mental health among students . They can discuss what is wellbeing and how it is important for students. They can assist in teaching simple exercises, including deep breathing, muscle relaxation, distraction, and positive self -talk. Virtual workshops can be conducted in which ‘life skills’ related to coping in stress can be in focus by using more practical examples.
• 4. Teachers can make children understand the importance of  prosocial behavior  and the importance of human virtues like empathy and patience among others. This can help them to understand their role in the society and understand how social distancing is not equivalent to emotional distancing.
• 5. The teachers need to  interact with parents  online or through phone regarding feedback about students and their mental health. Because of the digital divide they can call parents, make their contact available to parents and devote a time slot when they can be available to parents to communicate.
• 6. They can serve as a doorway for  identification and referral to specialty mental health providers . They have a role act as a catalyst between the parent based on their interaction with students and findings of screening tools. If they observe any problem in the child, they can talk to parents and refer children and adolescents to mental health professionals.
• 7. With the support of school authorities, teachers need to make arrangements to ensure that the  reading material  related academics and life skills is made available to the underprivileged children  who do not have access to the internet. If possible arrangements can be made for them to use internet.

2.12. Role of pediatricians

During a child's formative years when their personalities are shaped,  parents are in regular  touch with pediatricians, as parents reach out to their local pediatricians whenever they encounter health/ behavioral complaints associated with their children. Parents expect answers from them as they trust them. Hence a pediatrician's role is paramount in promoting mental health, developing resilience, recognizing mental health problems, and coordinate with the mental health care providers when it comes to mental health care of children. In the backdrop of COVID 19 specific roles of  pediatricians are enlisted below:

• 1. They must be equipped with a  teleconsultation  facility and must use it as much as possible. They must generously keep the option open for tele or online consultation for parents.
• 2. They should  educate parents  about the developmental needs of the children in various phases of childhood and also disseminate simple and specific mental health promotion reading material online or through handouts to parents.
• 3. Paediatrician is in a position to  recognize the physical manifestations  of stress and emotional health problems in children e.g. the various internalization and externalizing conditions, for instance, aches, pains, or acts of self-harm.
• 4. They also need to ask about the relevant information related to various  predisposing factors associated with the child  i.e. temperament, functioning, adjustment in school, peer group, routine and general activities of the child.
• 5. Various  psychosocial and medical determinants and stressors  of mental health like family history, economic stressors, family environment, neighborhood, etc. which may lead to underlying problems can be assessed.
• 6. Mental health check-ups  should be conducted with the help of brief standardized screening tools by which they can easily screen various mental health problems in children especially including ADHD, autism, anxiety disorders, and depression.
• 7. They need to  develop stronger networks  and build partnerships with mental health providers, for instance, clinical psychologists, child psychologists, and psychiatrists. They should work in collaboration with them and refer children to them as and when the need arises for special mental health care. There is a need to develop online CMEs with the help of partnerships with Psychologists.

2.13. Mental healthcare workers

During times of paramount stress when the mental health of children and adolescents around the globe is directly or indirectly impacted, the role of mental health care workers, including clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric social workers is crucial keeping in mind their professional responsibilities and social challenges.

• 1. There is a need for  ‘tele mental health compatibility’  in place of in-person assessments and interventions. The objective of the mental health care providers should be to reach out to the general public at large. They need to work towards the production and dissemination of audio-video material related to healthy parenting, mental health awareness, reduction of stigma, practice mental health hygiene, promote health behavior, and psycho-educational material associated with the mental health care of children and adolescents.
• 2. There is an urgent requirement of  coordinated and innovative mental health  care delivery. For this, coordination with people who are playing a key role in the mental health care of children and adolescents e.g. parents, pediatricians, teachers, school counselors, community volunteers, NGOs, police, etc. should be involved and oriented about the mental health condition and briefly trained in providing basic psychological support and psychological first aid.
• 3. Providing online orientation for teachers  or the creation of material for school teachers and school counselors related to mental health promotion, life skill training, coordination with parents, and referral to mental health care professionals.
• 4. Conducting brief online training of  pediatricians  for mental health screening of vulnerable children, assessment of psychosocial factors, providing inputs relevant for the management of mild stress and anxiety in children, and referring to mental health care professionals is included.
• 5. Creating material for  special schools  for mental health promotion and management of behavior problems using contingency management, providing psychological first aid, referring to mental health care professionals would be required.
• 6. Create material for  community volunteers  for identification of high-risk children, e.g. underprivileged children, children of migrants, provide psychological first aid, and coordinate with caregivers and mental health care professionals.
• 7. Mental health care workers should focus on the construction and administration of  online questionnaires  to detect psychological distress and other stress symptoms in children if they or their parents are quarantined and also provide extra ad hoc supportive interventions.
• 8. Clinical Psychologists should design and implement tele based or in-person  short term focused behavioral interventions  for the management of known conditions in children [e.g. ADHD, autism, intellectual disabilities] mostly parent-focused, initiated using digital and electronic medium. The pathological consequences of crisis e.g. PTSD, depression, substance abuse in adolescents should also be addressed on similar lines. There is a requirement for creative solutions, often on a case-by-case basis.
• 9. Psychiatrists need to carefully weigh  the risks and benefits of psychotropic medications  for children and adolescents e.g. anti-depressants, anxiolytics, anticonvulsants, etc., and if possible, arranging medicines for those who cannot arrange.
• 10. There is a need for mental health care workers carry out longitudinal  and developmental studies  on short term and long term mental health impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and lock down on children and adolescents.

2.14. Health system and policy makers

It has been recognized by the world that the traditional pre-COVID-19 models and policies for children and adolescents' mental health are no longer applicable during COVID 19 era. Hence, the need is felt for the transformation of policies that can take into account not only lock down duration but also times following the lockdown. The following recommendations may be useful for guiding the functioning of the health system and policy making related to mental health care  of children and adolescents :

• 1. The focus of the health care system should be prevention, promotion, and treatment according to the  public mental health system  to meet population- mental health needs of the general population at large.
• 2. No single umbrella policy would be able to take into account various mental health aspects of children and adolescents dwelling in different environments. Hence the health system and policies should be based on  contextual parameters  that are different for each country or region depending on the degree of infection and the phase of infection they are in.
• 3. Since there is a dearth of mental health care workers in most developing countries. There is a need for  inclusive approaches  in which health care workers e.g. pediatricians, general physicians, schools, non-governmental organizations sectors are involved. Moreover, brief basic mental health care training for these arms should be planned.
• 4. Separate rules for the rural, suburban, and concrete domiciles in growing countries spotting the variance among college districts, which includes city, suburban, and rural districts.
• 5. It is critically important to develop  flexible strategies  that can be revised and adapted to school and throughout the community and done with close communication with state and/or local public health authorities.
• 6. Policies should be formulated taking into account the  developmental stage of the child  e.g. preschoolers, school age, adolescents.
• 7. There is a need for full translation dominant therapy approaches to  telehealth compatibility, but clear rules and regulations regarding the same are mandatory.
• 8. It should be ensured that the vulnerable sections of the society (medically prone, underprivileged, having developmental challenges, or having disabilities) are not neglected.
• 9. The  school re-entry policies  should be defined considering strict implimentation of key principles of social distancing and hygiene. This should be done keeping in mind the importance of in-person learning for children in the school set up.
• 10. Ensure adequate  fund allocation  and proper monitoring and utilization of the funds for policy implementation.

2.15. Critical appraisal of the studies included

The studies included in the review were collected after setting criteria to have a comprehensive view of the global vision in managing the crisis of children in the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of the studies included in the review were based on online self-reports( Bhat et al., 2020 ; Jiao et al., 2020 ; Oosterhoff et al., 2020b ). The adults and older children were the respondents of the study( Lee, 2020 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Viner et al., 2020b ; Wang et al., 2020 ).  The studies are mainly carried out in the developed nations and the East Asian countries. Studies have reported the concerns may not be generalizable throughout the globe. There are variations in the number of samples as well, thus they make it difficult to generalize the findings of their study alone.

The cross sectional studies are useful in understanding the immediate or short term impact apparent at a certain point of time. However the limitations of these cross sectional studies are that these studies cannot conclude about the long term impact of COVID-19, given that certain pre-existing vulnerabilities, high risk factors and stressors could be multiple, ongoing or recurrent and also the manner through which they work may vary. Consequently, there is a pressing need for carrying out longitudinal and developmental studies to be able to apprehend multiple layers of dynamic determinants playing role during this time of global crisis ( Holmes et al., 2020 ).The literature suggests the need for evidence based elaborative strategies and plan of action to cater to the mental health needs of children and adolescents during the period of pandemic ( Wade et al., 2020 ).

3. Limitations

The review articles for this review have been selected during the time of global lockdown, where the issues and challenges were new and the global crisis was at peak times. In our review, we were unable to track the measures of management targeted towards the children. The strategies reported in the studies were isolated to geopolitical conditions. The recommendations provided in this review can be modified to suit the needs of the places according to their local resources and geopolitical scenarios. Due to strict selection criteria and the short period of data collection and the only use of electronic databases for our research, there is a possibility of missing studies relevant to the care of children and adolescents.

4. Conclusion

Although the rate of COVID-19 infection among young children and adolescents is low, the stress confronted by them poses their condition as highly vulnerable. Many cross-sectional studies have been conducted to analyze the impact of COVID-19 and lock down on children and youth. The results of these studies show that the nature and extent of this impact depend on several vulnerability factors such as the developmental age, educational status, pre-existing mental health condition, being economically underprivileged or being quarantined due to infection /fear of infection. Studies show that young children show more clinginess, disturbed sleep, nightmares, poor appetite, inattentiveness, and significant separation problems.

The containment measures like school and activity centers closures for long periods together expose the children and youth to the debilitating effects on educational, psychological, and developmental attainment as they experience loneliness, anxiety, and uncertainty. Compulsive use of internet gaming and social media puts them at higher risk. Children and adolescents with mental health conditions are not used to variation in the environment. Hence there could be an exacerbation in symptoms and behavioral problems.

The children who receive training, therapy, and other treatments are at high risk of being derailed from therapy and special educations. Economically underprivileged children are particularly prone to exploitation and abuse. Children quarantined are at high risk for developing higher risk for mental health-related challenges.

There is a need to ameliorate children and adolescent's access to mental health services by using both face to face as well as digital platforms. For this collaborative network of parents, psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, community volunteers, and NGOs are required. There is a need for ‘tele mental health compatibility’ and be accessible to the public at large. This would be crucial to prevent during and post-pandemic mental challenges in the most vulnerable and underprivileged section of the society. The focal point of the health care system and policymaking should be prevention, promotion, and interventions corresponding to the public mental health system to meet the mental health needs of the population at large by taking the regional contextual parameters into account.

Disclosure of prior presentation of study data

This paper has not been submitted in full or part in any conference and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.

Financial disclosure

This is a completely researcher initiated study without any external funding whatsoever.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shweta Singh: Writing - review & editing, Software, Validation, Supervision, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology. Deblina Roy: Validation, Visualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Software. Krittika Sinha: Visualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Sheeba Parveen: Visualization, Investigation. Ginni Sharma: Visualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Gunjan Joshi: Visualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft.

Declaration of Competing Interest

There is no known conflict of interest.The authors whose names are listed below certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants, participation in spakers’ bureaus arrangements, consultancies, memberships, stock ownerships, or other equity interest, or expert testimony and patent licencing arangements) or non financial interests such as ( personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs)in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. All the authors confirm that, all of them has contributed in the conception of design; analysis, interpretation of data; drafting the article; critically revisiting the article for important intellectual inputs; and approval of the final version. This paper has not been submitted elsewhere or is under review at another journal or publishing venue. The authors have no affiliation with any organization, with a direct or indirect financial interest in the subject matter discussed in the manuscript.

Acknowldegment

We would like to Acknowldge the efforts of Mrs. Meenakshi Seth and Mr. Prakhar Bhanu, who were involved in improving the language of the manuscript. Additionally the authors are gratefull to the CORONA Warriers i.e. the Health Care Workers for their selfless and tremendous service to the mankind.

☆ This paper is aimed at reviewing articles related to mental-health aspects of children and adolescents impacted by COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. There is a need to carry out longitudinal and developmental studies and plan strategies to enhance children's and adolescent's access to mental health services during and after the current crisis. For this direct and digital collaborative network of psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, and community volunteers are of vital importance.

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113429 .

Appendix. Supplementary materials

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• Defence and armed forces

Deputy Prime Minister speech on resilience: 22 May 2024

Deputy Prime Minister makes a speech at the London Defence Conference on resilience.

INTRODUCTION/COVID CONTEXT

Four years ago – almost to the day – I was standing in 10 Downing Street giving the daily press conference during the early months of the COVID pandemic.

It was a terrifying time.

An unknown – unforeseen – entity had upended our way of life…

… was taking the lives of thousands…

… and endangering the livelihoods of millions more.

Britain’s response to such a pandemic – and indeed our wider resilience – was under the spotlight.

We quickly discovered where our strengths and weaknesses lay:

We turned to business and civil society to augment our capabilities – from the ventilator challenge to the vaccine army.

While Rishi Sunak deployed our hard-won economic heft…

…to protect jobs, through the unprecedented furlough scheme…

…and to protect businesses and national institutions…

… including through the £2 billion cultural recovery fund that I led as Culture Secretary.

I’ll leave it to others – including the COVID Inquiry – to make judgements on our relative performance…

… but I am hugely proud of the way the whole of society…

…the NHS, Government, businesses, civil society and individuals….

… came together in response to the generational crisis of COVID.

We were able to effect the fastest vaccine rollout…

…a speedy end to lockdowns…

… and one of the quickest economic recoveries.

RESILIENCE SINCE COVID

Although the virus is still amongst us - and continues to affect particularly those with long Covid…

…we have, largely, returned to normality.

And as much as many of us would like to forget those dark days…

… it is right that Government ensures that we are prepared for the next crisis.

That’s why, on day one in this role, I turned my focus to exactly that.

In the last 18 months we have launched a new Resilience Framework – outlining ambitious plans through to 2030…

…a dedicated Resilience Directorate – constantly scanning the horizon for future threats…

…and an Emergency Alerts system – ready to notify people if lives are at risk.

We have bolstered our Local Resilience Fora…

…developed a dedicated programme to assess and act early upon chronic risks…

… we have harnessed the transformational power of data through our world leading National Situation Centre…

…and published the most transparent-ever National Risk Register.

We have also recognised that crises have a disproportionate effect on vulnerable people…

… and so we are taking specific actions to better protect those groups.

The work we do is now independently reviewed and genuinely cutting-edge.

These reforms amount to the biggest overhaul of resilience in the UK for decades.

INCREASING THREATS

But as we have been increasing our defences, the threats we face have been proliferating.

Geopolitical tensions have risen to heights not seen for decades …

… climate change has compounded the risk from natural disasters…

… and – as became all-too-real with COVID – biosecurity hazards pose potentially existential threats to our lives and livelihoods.

All the while we become increasingly dependent on digital technology which brings extraordinary opportunities…

… but also creates new vulnerabilities and threats.

In particular, generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry for malign on-line actors…

…making the UK’s leadership on frontier AI risks essential.

GOVERNMENT POSTURE/WHOLE OF SOCIETY

And as the Prime Minister said last week, more will change in the next five years than in the last thirty.

So it is right that we take stock and consider how we make sure we are as resilient as possible.

There are currently around 100 risks on the Government’s risk register, ranging from cyber attacks to solar flares.

It is important at this stage to say that it is not the job of Government to be optimally prepared for just one of these risks manifesting…

… rather it is our job to position our finite resources so that we can prevent risks where we can…

…have plans in place for where we cannot…

…and are able to put those plans into practice as quickly as possible in a crisis.

It’s a trade-off.

You cannot be fully prepared for one and sensibly prepared for all.

One thing that COVID made clear – and that remains clear – is that crises can hit us all…

…in ways we might not be able to anticipate…

… and that resilience requires us all to be ready.

It is this ‘whole of society’ approach that – ultimately – saw us overcome the pandemic.

Now, none of us want to spend disproportionate time dwelling on the ‘what ifs’ or the ‘worst-case scenarios’…

… but we do ourselves a disservice – indeed we put ourselves at risk – if we don’t put sensible precautions in place.

And so today, I want to outline both the steps the Government is taking…

… and the steps we urge others to take, to strengthen our collective, national resilience.

INDIVIDUALS

That resilience begins at home.

After the reaction to my intervention on preparedness last Autumn…

… where I was painted as either alarmist…

… or as some sort of doomsday prepper…

… I want to take head on the suggestion that we shouldn’t talk about this issue.

Who can forget the empty supermarket shelves in the early days of the pandemic?

And how many of us have since acted so we’d be prepared if it happened again?

If there was a national power outage, how many of us have torches and batteries?

If the water went off, how many of us have a few bottles stored away?

And if there was a cyber attack, how many of us have the means to listen to the radio without mains power or wi-fi?

A poll released today by our hosts - the London Defence Conference - shows that just 15 per cent of people have an emergency supply kit in their homes…

… while more than 40 per cent of people do not have three days’ supplies of non-perishable food and water.

It is still the case, I make no apologies for reinforcing my recommendations that all households take a few minutes to consider their preparedness.

I am determined to make this as easy as possible, and to offer clear guidance.

This is not about stockpiling, this is about sensible safeguards.

And so, I can announce that today we are launching a new gov.uk website, based on the National Risk Register, that offers practical information for households to make those preparations.

This is about being prepared ahead of events…

…small things we can do today that might make a big difference tomorrow.

INTERNATIONAL COMPARATORS

Perhaps it is the legacy of the old ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality that means it is unusual for a British minister to talk about resilience…

… certainly there is far more of a culture of doing so around the world.

In Finland they have a ’72 hours campaign’ which encourages everyone to be self-sufficient in the first three days of any crisis…

… as well as an annual ‘National Preparedness Day’.

Meanwhile, I recently visited the earthquake preparedness centre in Tokyo…

… where they have an entire crisis management centre ready to go when the next big quake hits.

And although we are fortunate not to have to worry too much about the UK’s earthquake resilience…

… I do want to embrace that spirit of openness around national preparedness…

… and to share lessons from our respective training and exercising programmes.

That is why I am pleased that resilience and crisis-management officials are actively engaging with their counterparts in these and other countries.

Indeed many of them are represented here at this conference.

Of course, when it comes to our international partnerships, the bedrock of our resilience is the NATO alliance…

… which is why our commitment to spend an additional £75 billion over the next six years - increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030…

… is so important.

It is also right that we consider our resilience and our defence together…

… and so - working with NATO and other partners - we are bringing forward a comprehensive National Defence and Resilience Plan…

… based on the very latest threat assessment and bringing together both civil and military planning.

Although crisis-response is so often considered through the prism of central government or individuals…

… the truth is, it is communities that make the difference between success and failure.

It is the response of public services, businesses, local resilience fora and the voluntary sector that determines the extent to which services, and economic output, are hit.

In these moments we look to local leaders…

…as much as to national government.

And we want to offer all of these individuals appropriate training.

We have already announced the new national Resilience Academy… 

…which will see several thousand people trained to deal with crises

this year and next year.

And I can announce today that, for the first time, we will create bespoke training offers for both ministers and MPs…

… and I am looking forward to attending the early pilot of these courses.

It is also important that we stress-test our response…

… putting both our training and our plans into action…

… and being candid about where we find vulnerabilities.

Although those on the resilience frontline are constantly working to iterate their own preparations…

… we can only assess their efficacy when we bring them together and practise them in concert.

So I am also pleased today to launch the new National Exercising Programme.

This plan schedules training over the next 4 years…

… and is designed to test as many of the common knock-on effects of crises as possible.

Importantly, next year – five years on from the heart of the first lockdown – we will conduct a major ‘Tier 1’ exercise, testing our response to a major pandemic…

… this will be the largest ever simulation of a pandemic in the United Kingdom…

… and will involve thousands of people from across Government and public services.

LGD MODEL/RESOURCING

At the heart of our resilience systems is the ‘lead government departmental’ model…

…where risks are delegated to those departments which already cover the relevant areas.

I am aware that the model has been called into question…

… but I believe it is still the right foundation to build on.

The alternative is to create a huge new centralised government agency…

… simultaneously duplicating sector-specific expertise…

… and potentially ignoring the expertise that departments have built up over years.

But that does not mean that we should not look to improve our current approach.

I believe we need to do so in three crucial ways:

… in our approach to central oversight…

… our approach to resourcing…

… and our approach to catastrophic risks.

CENTRAL OVERSIGHT

When it comes to oversight, it is not right that departments are able to ‘mark their own homework’…

… nor can the centre absolve themselves of responsibility for making sure those plans are robust.

And so, through the new Resilience Directorate, the Cabinet Office is being more active in embedding a culture of resilience right across Whitehall…

… developing critical cross-cutting capabilities …

… and ensuring that the join-up between departments is as seamless as it needs to be.

As part of this, we will use some of the £10 million ‘Economic and Fiscal Risks Fund’ announced at the Autumn Statement last year…

… to fund necessary proactive mitigations.

That fund will also be used for research into how we embed a culture of resilience into our public spending decisions.

When money is tight, the concept of spending to save falls out of favour…

… and although it is right that we have a rigorous value-for-money criteria…

… it is also true that every penny we spend on resilience today…

… saves pounds when a crisis strikes.

It is estimated that the entire cost of COVID to Government was around 350 billion pounds…

… that’s well over £10,000 for every household. Money that will have to be paid back.

And yet the cost of Covid in lives would have been far greater had we not invested in our health services and life science industry in the preceding decades…

…and the cost to livelihoods would have been far greater if we hadn’t had the prudent financial management that meant we could fund schemes like furlough.

Because for me there is no greater source of resilience than a strong economy.

Of course, that hindsight was impossible then… but it can – and should – improve our foresight now.

And so, as we approach the next Spending Review, I have asked all departments to consider these lessons as they look to submit their bids for resilience spending…

… and, in some critical areas, such as biosecurity and cybersecurity, the Cabinet Office is working with all relevant departments to generate consolidated bids…

… reflecting the pervasive, cross-departmental nature of these challenges.

Allocating the proper resourcing is one thing, but ensuring it is subsequently spent as planned is another.

It is understandable that, when times are tight, or unforeseen pressures emerge, you might raid the rainy day fund…

… but for too long departments have cannibalised long-planned resilience spend to ease day-to-day pressures.

There are always urgent, immediate spending priorities.

It’s the job of the centre to ensure that some areas are protected from those shorter-term decisions.

And so, I can also announce today, that in the critical area of biosecurity we have agreed that all spend will be ring-fenced through the next Spending Review period…

… and I am working with the Chancellor to consider how we can extend this protected approach to all resilience spending.

CATASTROPHIC RISKS

Of the 100 risks on the National Risk Register, we consider only a handful as catastrophic in scale….

…events that would have a profound effect on all our lives and that pose an existential threat to our national security, our society, even our lives.

When it comes to these risks…

…which have cascading impacts affecting other departments and their sectors…

…the lead government department model on its own is not sufficient to either make preparations, or to manage the response.

In these instances, I believe the Cabinet Office at the heart of government should play a much fuller role in coordinating our response.

For these risks, I also think it is right to look at the interaction between the devolved administrations and central Government.

It is my belief that when catastrophic crisis have nation-wide impact, it deserves a nation-wide response.

During COVID we saw the confusion that arose when the various administrations pursued different policies…

… and even descended into political game playing in tit-for-tat announcements.

And so, where a crisis meets the threshold of having catastrophic impact…

… we will work to ensure that, in future, we reduce policy divergence in our response…

…and deliver a consistent and coordinated approach across the whole of our United Kingdom.

BIOSECURITY

The area that gives rise to the most likely, and most severe catastrophic risk, is biosecurity.

This might be naturally-occurring infections, such as epidemics, pandemics or antimicrobial resistance…

…it might be biological attacks…

…or new threats from AI.

In every scenario we are strengthening our collective defences and doubling down our delivery of the UK’s world-leading Biosecurity Strategy…

…and today I can confirm we are committing to increasing our investment to mitigate these risks…

…and will be setting out the details of this in my first annual statement on its implementation to Parliament at the end of June.

Resilience is a ministerial portfolio unlike any other.

It is the only part of government where you hope that the plans you work so hard to develop never have to be put into practice.

It can feel overwhelming when you’re confronted with a vast array of constantly changing doomsday scenarios.

But I approach the agenda with a deep sense of confidence and optimism.

Because while the risks are great…

…the resources and resolve we have are greater – and growing by the day.

Since the Covid pandemic – and specifically within the last year – we have seen the single biggest transformation of preparedness in a generation…

…creating an approach that is copied around the world.

We have changed resilience from something that is tucked away in government…

…into something that is a part of our everyday lives.

In many ways, we came through Covid because of the goodwill of our people.

The nurses, doctors and other clinical staff who cared for our sick.

The world-class civil servants who coordinated the government’s response.

The scientists who developed the vaccine that freed us.

And good neighbours, good sons and daughters, and good citizens up and down the country who played their part.

It was a whole of society effort, underpinned by a strong economy.

But we cannot take those things for granted.

We are working ahead of time to equip the whole of society to prepare for - and even prevent - the next shock…

…while delivering a clear and robust plan that is so vital to our national defences.

And so the new measures I have set out today give us yet more tools in our armoury - whenever - if ever - we need them.

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