Post-Lockdown Effects on Students' Mental Health in Romania: Perceived Stress, Missing Daily Social Interactions, and Boredom Proneness

How did the COVID-19 pandemic influence students' career expectations in the hotel and tourism industry?

Career expectations contribute to job satisfaction and worker persistence. The tourism industry is characterized by high staff turnover. The industry was decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic causing widespread unemployment and transforming working conditions, while radically altering educational conditions for hospitality and tourism students. We assessed how the pandemic influenced students' expectations, comparing undergraduate opinions before and during the pandemic. While Pandemic-Students were more pessimistic about working conditions, they revealed an increased desire to provide personal interactive service and a greater tendency towards entrepreneurialism. These results contrast with previous research; highlighting students' resilience and suggesting a positive vision of pandemic-related opportunities.

Relationship between emotional intelligence and learning motivation among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic: A serial mediation model

The vital influence of emotional intelligence on college students' learning motivation has received considerable attention. This study analyzed not only the relationship between emotional intelligence and college students' learning motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the serial mediating roles that self-efficacy and social support play in this relationship. Using a cross-sectional survey design, we collected data from 336 college students across 30 provinces in China, using four well-established scales measuring emotional intelligence, learning motivation, self-efficacy, and social support. We analyzed the mediating effects using the Bootstrap method. The results showed that emotional intelligence positively predicted learning motivation, and that self-efficacy and social support played serial mediating roles between emotional intelligence and learning motivation. This finding suggests the need for interventions to help college students develop emotional intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that fostering college students' self-efficacy and providing multiple social supports would help improve their motivation and academic performance.

Psychosocial work environment stressors for school staff during the COVID-19 pandemic: Barriers and facilitators for supporting wellbeing

Introduction

After periods of remote and/or hybrid learning as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the return to in-person learning has been beneficial for both students and teachers, but it has not been without challenges. This study was designed to assess the impact of the return to in-person learning on the school experience, and efforts made to ease the transition in furthering a positive in-person learning environment.

Materials and methods

We conducted a series of listening sessions with 4 stakeholder groups: students (n = 39), parents (n = 28), teachers/school staff (n = 41), and a combination of listening sessions and semi-structured interviews with building level and district administrators (n = 12), focusing on in-school experiences during the 2021–2022 school year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A primarily deductive qualitative analysis approach was employed to code the data followed by a primarily inductive thematic analysis, followed by thematic aggregation, thus providing depth and identification of nuances in the data.

Results

Three main themes emerged around school staff experiences: (1) increased levels of stress and anxiety manifested in key ways, including students' challenges with personal behavior management contributing to increased aggression and staff shortages; (2) school staff described key contributors to stress and anxiety, including feeling excluded from decision making and challenges with clear and consistent communication; and (3) school staff described key facilitators that supported their management of anxiety and stress, including adaptability, heightened attention and resources to wellbeing, and leveraging interpersonal relationships.

Discussion

School staff and students faced significant stress and anxiety during the 2021–2022 school year. Further exploration and identification of approaches to mitigate key contributors to increased stress and anxiety for school staff, along with increased opportunities for implementing key facilitators that were identified as important in managing and navigating the increased stress and anxiety offer valuable opportunities for helping to create a supportive work environment for school staff in the future.

On enhancing students' cognitive abilities in online learning using brain activity and eye movements

The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted education institutions in over 150 nations, affecting billions of students. Many governments have forced a transition in higher education from in-person to remote learning. After this abrupt, worldwide transition away from the classroom, some question whether online education will continue to grow in acceptance in post-pandemic times. However, new technology, such as the brain-computer interface and eye-tracking, have the potential to improve the remote learning environment, which currently faces several obstacles and deficiencies. Cognitive brain computer interfaces can help us develop a better understanding of brain functions, allowing for the development of more effective learning methodologies and the enhancement of brain-based skills. We carried out a systematic literature review of research on the use of brain computer interfaces and eye-tracking to measure students' cognitive skills during online learning. We found that, because many experimental tasks depend on recorded rather than real-time video, students don't have direct and real-time interaction with their teacher. Further, we found no evidence in any of the reviewed papers for brain-to-brain synchronization during remote learning. This points to a potentially fruitful future application of brain computer interfaces in education, investigating whether the brains of student-teacher pairs who interact with the same course content have increasingly similar brain patterns.

Examining the Longitudinal Associations between Adjustment Disorder Symptoms and Boredom during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a myriad of stressors, underscoring the relevance of adjustment disorder during these extraordinary times. Boredom-as a feeling and as a dispositional characteristic-is an equally pertinent experience during the pandemic that has been cross-sectionally linked to various mental health difficulties. The current longitudinal study expanded on this work, examining the associations between adjustment disorder symptoms and boredom (both as a feeling and as a trait) over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Community participants completed questionnaires three times, rating their trait boredom at Time 1 and their feelings of boredom and adjustment disorder symptoms (preoccupation with a pandemic stressor and failure to adapt) over the past week at Times 1-3. Latent growth curve analyses found that an increase in feelings of boredom was significantly associated with increased preoccupation with a pandemic stressor and increased difficulties with adapting over time. Additionally, trait boredom significantly predicted changes in preoccupation and the failure to adapt, such that participants high in trait boredom increasingly struggled with these symptoms over time. Our results suggest that increased feelings of boredom and a trait disposition towards boredom can be detrimental to people's ability to adjust over time to the stressors associated with the pandemic. Boredom, as an aversive state and as a chronic difficulty, may be important to address in treatment approaches for adjustment disorder symptoms during COVID-19.

COVID-19 pandemic's impact on French Health Students: A cross-sectional study during the third wave

BACKGROUND

COVID19 pandemic had a huge impact on global mental health. Health students, because of their age and status, are a more at-risk population. National survey during the first wave already found high levels of psychological distress.

OBJECTIVE

This nationwide study aimed to assess health's student mental health during the third wave in France.

METHODS

We did an online national cross-sectional study, which addressed all health students from April 4th to May 11th 2021. The questionnaire included sociodemographic and work conditions questions, Kessler 6 scale, and numeric scales.

RESULTS

16,937 students answered, including 54% nurse and 16% medical students. Regarding K6 scale, 14% have moderate (8-12) and 83% high (≥13) level of psychological distress. In multivariate analysis, being a man (OR = 0.54, 95% CI [0.48; 0.60], p < 0.001) and not living alone (OR = 0.71, 95% CI [0.62; 0.82], p < 0.001), are associated with a reduced risk of psychological distress. Not having the ability to isolate themselves (OR = 1.58, 95% CI [1.39; 1.81], p < 0.001), and having low (OR = 2.31, 95% CI [2.08; 2.56], p < 0.001) or important (OR = 4.58, 95% CI [3.98; 5.29], p < 0.001) financial difficulties are associated with an increased risk of psychological distress.

LIMITATIONS

The response rate was low regarding the target population (300,000 health students).

CONCLUSION

Compared to the first national survey, we noticed mental health deterioration. Psychological distress (83% high level versus 21%), substance use (21% versus 13%), and psychotropic treatment use (18% versus 7.3%) hugely increased. These results highlighted the need to increase support actions for health students.

Social Cohesion and Community Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northern Romania

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lock-down have highlighted the growing awareness of the need to involve the population in solving problems that directly affect the existence and trajectory of the life of the individual and civil society in the local, national, and regional context. The article aims both to analyze the reaction of formal and informal civil society in a context of major crisis and to analyze how the population perceives the involvement of civil society at the level of a county in Romania and its county seat city. The present sociological diagnosis used data that were collected through an online survey at the beginning of May 2020 among the population of Suceava County. It was sought to identify how the reaction of civil society was perceived and how it was mobilized, as well as how the mass media contributed to reducing the effects of the pandemic. After the elimination phase of non-compliant responses, the volume of the sample included a total of 1231 people. The results of the study indicate that this pandemic context, which manifested as a major crisis, also had positive effects in the sense of mobilizing latent but extensive energies at the local level, whose manifestation contributed to diminishing and limiting the effects of the sanitary crisis the county faced. The media, as a component of civil society, has managed to mobilize important segments of the population, both in quarantined localities and in other localities in Suceava County and Moldova. The COVID-19 crisis tested the social cohesion and resilience of communities and offered perhaps one of the most remarkable lessons of solidarity in the post-December period, both locally and nationally. Although the perception of Romanians on the role of civil society would rather be part of a culture of individualism, in extreme situations it was found that its activity has never been more important.

Effect of Housing Quality on the Mental Health of University Students during the COVID-19 Lockdown

COVID-19 outbreak imposed rapid and severe public policies that consistently impacted the lifestyle habits and mental health of the general population. Despite vaccination, lockdown restrictions are still considered as potential measures to contrast COVID-19 variants spread in several countries. Recent studies have highlighted the impacts of lockdowns on the population's mental health; however, the role of the indoor housing environment where people spent most of their time has rarely been considered. Data from 8177 undergraduate and graduate students were collected in a large, cross-sectional, web-based survey, submitted to a university in Northern Italy during the first lockdown period from 1 April to 1 May 2020. Logistic regression analysis showed significant associations between moderate and severe depression symptomatology (PHQ-9 scores ≥ 15), and houses with both poor indoor quality and small dimensions (OR = 4.132), either medium dimensions (OR = 3.249) or big dimensions (OR = 3.522). It was also found that, regardless of housing size, poor indoor quality is significantly associated with moderate-severe depressive symptomatology. Further studies are encouraged to explore the long-term impact of built environment parameter modifications on mental health, and therefore support housing and public health policies.

The Lack of Academic Social Interactions and Students’ Learning Difficulties during COVID-19 Faculty Lockdowns in Croatia: The Mediating Role of the Perceived Sense of Life Disruption Caused by the Pandemic and the Adjustment to Online Studying

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions and changes to the educational process worldwide, and higher education institutions rapidly shifted from onsite to online education. This study aimed to explore the association between a perceived lack of academic social interactions in the online learning environment and learning and self-regulation difficulties experienced during online studying. More specifically, the mediating role of students’ senses of life disruption caused by the pandemic and their general adjustment to online studying in the previously described association was explored. A total number of 464 university students from Croatia took part in an online questionnaire. The results revealed that students who perceive a greater lack of academic social interactions also report more learning and self-regulation difficulties during online studying. Further, the perceived lack of academic social interactions affects students’ perceptions of life disruption caused by the pandemic and adjustment to online studying. Both of these mediators, in turn, affect the level of experienced learning and self-regulation difficulties. The obtained results can be helpful for introducing certain measures that could support students’ learning and reduce the possibility of adverse effects of the pandemic.