scholarly journals Work-Related Mental Health Under COVID-19 Restrictions: A Mini Literature Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Yingbo Xu ◽  
Danni Ma

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) restrictions, including national lockdown, social distancing, compulsory quarantine, and organizational measures of remote working, are imposed in many countries and organizations to combat the coronavirus. The various restrictions have caused different impacts on the employees' mental health worldwide. The purpose of this mini-review is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on employees' mental health across the world. We searched articles in Web of Science and Google Scholar, selecting literature focusing on employees' mental health conditions under COVID-19 restrictions. The findings reveal that the psychological impacts of teleworking are associated with employees' various perceptions of its pros and cons. The national lockdown, quarantine, and resuming to work can cause mild to severe mental health issues, whereas the capability to practice social distancing is positively related to employees' mental health. Generally, employees in developed countries have experienced the same negative and positive impacts on mental health, whereas, in developing countries, employees have reported a more negative effect of the restrictions. One explanation is that the unevenly distributed mental health resources and assistances in developed and developing countries.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Antonova ◽  
Karoly Schlosser ◽  
Rakesh Pandey ◽  
Veena Kumari

The novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 that first emerged in Wuhan, China, in Nov-Dec 2019 has already impacted a significant proportion of the world population. Governments of many countries imposed quarantines and social distancing measures in 2020, many of which remain in place, to mitigate the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus causing the COVID-19 disease. The direct impact of COVID-19 on people infected with the virus, their families and the health care workers, as well as the impact of the mitigation measures such as quarantine, social distancing, and self-isolation on the rest of the population have contributed to a global mental health pandemic, including anxiety, depression, panic attacks, posttraumatic stress symptoms, psychosis, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidality. These effects are present acutely (for example, due to fear of contamination or losing loved ones, effects of quarantine/isolation, withdrawal of community and social services, etc.) and may continue long after the pandemic is over (for example, due to bereavement, unemployment, financial losses, etc). The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered mental health problems in people without previous history of mental illness, as well as worsened the symptoms in those with pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis. Therefore, the global effort is called for to deal with this mental health pandemic secondary to COVID-19 itself to address the emergence of new as well as the exacerbation of the existing mental health issues. Conversely, this global context provides an extraordinary opportunity for studying individual differences in response to and resilience in the face of physical and psychological threat, challenge to “normal” way of life, and long-term uncertainty. In this viewpoint article we outline the particular suitability of mindfulness, its skills and mechanisms, as an approach to the prevention and management of mental health issues, as well as to the promotion of well-being and building the foundations of adaptability and flexibility in dealing with the long-term uncertainty and profound changes to the social, economic, and possibly political systems as this pandemic continues to unfold.


Author(s):  
Peiwen Guo ◽  
Dong Zeng ◽  
Haina Yan ◽  
Kin-Sun Chan ◽  
Yifen Yin

Social distancing restrictions for COVID-19 epidemic prevention have substantially changed the field of youths’ social activities. Many studies have focused on the impact of epidemic-preventative social distancing on individual physical and mental health. However, in the field of social distancing for epidemic prevention, what are the changes in youth anti-epidemic action and states caused by their interpersonal resources and interactions? Responding to this question by studying the impact of the elements of social capital in youths’ anti-epidemic actions and anti-epidemic states could help identify an effective mechanism for balancing social distancing for effective epidemic prevention and sustainable social-participation development among youth. Bourdieu’s field theory holds that the elements of social capital change with a change in the field. Therefore, we introduced the specific elements of social capital as independent variables and used a multinomal logistic model to analyze and predict the levels of youth anti-epidemic action through an empirical investigation of 1043 young people in Guangdong Province, China. The results show that, first, level of social distancing for epidemic prevention shows differences by occupation status and income level and correlates with social support. Second, social support and social norms play positive roles in promoting youth participation in anti-epidemic activities when social distance is certain. Third, social capital has a significant positive effect on youth social satisfaction and core relationships; however, social trust has a significant negative effect on youth physical and mental health. This study emphasized that social distancing for epidemic prevention is a special social situational state, which is a field where social capital has an impact on the differential changes in the public-participating actions and habitus of youth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (02) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Nugraheni Dwi Utami

<p><em>This paper analyses the impact of Chinese import competition on deindustrialization measured by real value added and employment share in 61 developed and developing countries over 1970-2010 period. By employing quantile regression with instrumental variables to correct potential endogeneity bias, the results suggest that the main driver of deindustrialization in employment in developed countries is technological change. There is heterogeneous effect of China shock. In developed countries, the effect is destructive in term of both employment and real value added in the lower quantile of distribution, with the higher magnitude for the former. In the higher quantile, complementary effect outweighs detrimental impact. In developing countries, the negative effect of China’s shock on real value-added rises as the increase in the proportion of manufacturing value-added in countries. The destructive effect on employment in developing countries seems to be harder after 1990 period.</em></p><p><strong><em>K</em></strong><strong><em>eywords</em></strong><em>: China, competition, deindustrialization</em></p><p><em><br /></em></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ignacio Gallea ◽  
Leonardo Adrián Medrano ◽  
Luis Pedro Morera

The scientific and educational community is becoming increasingly aware of the impact of current academic working conditions on graduate students’ mental health and how this is affecting scientific progress and ultimately society as a whole. Our study aimed to shed light on the work-related mental health issues affecting graduate students, providing a comprehensive research work including psychological and biological assessment. Our findings showed that a sizeable number of graduate student present anxiety, depression, or high burnout and that the time spent in academia plays an important role. The graduate student population displayed a specific work-related mental health issues profile with an altered hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and low levels of work engagement. Finally, graduate students were equally stressed, with less work engagement, and more anxious and depressed than general workers.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
endang naryono

Covid-19 or the corona virus is a virus that has become a disaster and a global humanitarian disaster began in December 2019 in Wuhan province in China, April 2020 the spread of the corona virus has spread throughout the world making the greatest humanitarian disaster in the history of human civilization after the war world II, Already tens of thousands of people have died, millions of people have been infected with the conona virus from poor countries, developing countries to developed countries overwhelmed by this virus outbreak. Increasingly, the spread follows a series of measurements while patients who recover recover from a series of counts so that this epidemic becomes a very frightening disaster plus there is no drug or vaccine for this corona virus yet found, so that all countries implement strategies to reduce this spread from social distancing, phycal distancing to with a city or country lockdown.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5882
Author(s):  
Rita Yi Man Li ◽  
Yi Lut Li ◽  
M. James C. Crabbe ◽  
Otilia Manta ◽  
Muhammad Shoaib

We argue that environmental legislation and regulation of more developed countries reflects significantly their moral values, but in less developed countries it differs significantly from their moral values. We examined this topic by using the keywords “sustainability” and “sustainable development”, studying web pages and articles published between 1974 to 2018 in Web of Science, Scopus and Google. Australia, Zimbabwe, and Uganda were ranked as the top three countries in the number of Google searches for sustainability. The top five cities that appeared in sustainability searches through Google are all from Africa. In terms of academic publications, China, India, and Brazil record among the largest numbers of sustainability and sustainable development articles in Scopus. Six out of the ten top productive institutions publishing sustainable development articles indexed in Scopus were located in developing countries, indicating that developing countries are well aware of the issues surrounding sustainable development. Our results show that when environmental law reflects moral values for betterment, legal adoption is more likely to be successful, which usually happens in well-developed regions. In less-developed states, environmental law differs significantly from moral values, such that changes in moral values are necessary for successful legal implementation. Our study has important implications for the development of policies and cultures, together with the enforcement of environmental laws and regulations in all countries.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002076402110272
Author(s):  
Dana Alonzo ◽  
Marciana Popescu ◽  
Pinar Zubaroglu-Ioannides

Background: On March 5th, Guatemala declared a ‘State of Calamity’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and strict lockdown measures were initiated. The psychological consequences of these measures are yet to be fully understood. There is limited research on the psychological impact of the virus in the general population, and even less focused on Latin America and high-risk communities characterized by poverty, limited mental health resources, and high rates of stigma around mental illness. The goal of this study is to examine the psychological impact of COVID-19 across several highly vulnerable districts in Guatemala. Methods: A semi-structured phone interview was conducted of 295 individuals in multiple districts in Guatemala City to assess self-perceived mental health consequences related to the pandemic. Sociodemographic, medical, and mental health data were collected. Chisquares and t-tests used for categorical and continuous variables, as appropriate, to describe the sample. Binary logistic regressions were estimated to examine associations between sociodemographic characteristics and mental health symptoms (anxiety, stress, depression, burnout, escalation of pre-existing mental health symptoms, and a sense of safety). Results: The results indicate high levels of anxiety and stress in all target communities. Significant differences based on gender, age, and the number of children in the household were identified: women and older adults experience higher rates of stress and anxiety associated with the pandemic; while families with greater number of children experience higher levels of burnout. Conclusion: Contextualizing the current pandemic as a complex emergency can help inform further studies focusing on socioeconomic challenges and higher vulnerabilities as preconditions affecting the impact of the pandemic on mental health. Given the limited available resources for mental health care in Guatemala, informal networks of care may play an important role in meeting the needs of those individuals experiencing increased psychological distress resulting from the pandemic.


Author(s):  
Erwin Stolz ◽  
Hannes Mayerl ◽  
Wolfgang Freidl

Abstract Background To halt the spread of COVID-19, Austria implemented a 7-week ’lockdown’ in March/April 2020. We assess whether the ensuing reduction in social contacts led to increased loneliness among older adults (60+). Methods Three analyses were conducted: (1) A comparison between pre-pandemic (SHARE: 2013-2017) and pandemic (May 2020) levels of loneliness (UCLA-3 scale), (2) an assessment of the cross-sectional correlation between being affected by COVID-19 restriction measures and loneliness (May 2020), and (3) a longitudinal analysis of weekly changes (March-June 2020) in loneliness (Corona panel). Results We found (1) increased loneliness in 2020 compared with previous years, (2) a moderate positive association between the number of restriction measures older adults were affected from and their loneliness, and (3) that loneliness was higher during ’lockdown’ compared to the subsequent re-opening phase, particularly among those who live alone. Conclusion We provide evidence that COVID-19 restriction measures in Austria have indeed resulted in increased levels of loneliness among older adults. However, these effects seem to be short-lived, and thus no strong negative consequences for older adults’ mental health are expected. Nonetheless, the effects on loneliness, and subsequent mental health issues, might be both more long-lasting and severe if future restriction measures are enacted repeatedly and/or over longer time periods.


2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-335
Author(s):  
Abubakr Saeed ◽  
Yuhua Ding ◽  
Shawkat Hammoudeh ◽  
Ishtiaq Ahmad

This study examines the relationship between terrorism and economic openness that takes into account both the number and intensity of terrorist incidents and the impact of government military expenditures on trade-GDP and foreign direct investment-GDP ratios for both developed and developing countries. It uses the dynamic GMM method to account for endogeneity in the variables. Deaths caused by terrorism have a significant negative impact on FDI flows, and the number of terrorist attacks is also found to be significant in hampering the countries’ ability to trade with other nations. The study also demonstrates that the developing countries exhibit almost similar results to our main analysis. The developed countries exhibit a negative impact of terrorism, but the regression results are not significant.


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