Students Mental Health Through School Before and after COVID-19

3 years ago, life unexpectedly changed for everyone. Especially for students, who have had to go through massive changes with isolation, school and mental health.

Being in this pandemic left students confused and feeling alone and it definitely wasn’t easy going into university. From being totally online to switching to in person in a random semester did not seem to help these students cope after COVID and the workload school had to offer

Grace Stewart is a second-year student at St. Thomas University and started her year at school online in the fall of 2021.

Before the pandemic started, Stewart had already struggled with her mental health and had become more severe once the pandemic started and going into university. Due to this, Stewart’s mental health and anxiety has gone up and since her arrival at St. Thomas, she is a member of the Mental Health society

“COVID-19 affected students, mentally, emotionally, physically, academically. I think there needs to be more understanding around that instead of expecting us to ‘go back to normal’ or be able to function the way that we were before COVID,” said Stewart.

As COVID grew, no one was able to fully comfort anyone since no one knew where this virus would take us and what it would lead into in the future. Not only was everyone physically isolated but could sometimes feel emotionally and mentally isolated as well not having anyone to know what comes ahead.

“There’s not a lot of talk about COVID-19 on mental health. In our world where everything’s gotten so expensive and everyone is just struggling to survive and struggling to pave their way into this world, there’s not a lot of talk about mental health as I necessarily think there should be,” said Stewart.

Not only has it been hard mentally but, as for Amber Rae, a third-year student, having her first 2 years completely online, then going to in person and having her first ‘real’ year and experience of university was challenging.

Students throughout these past few years have not only faced isolation, and the continuation of what’s going to happen next but also the challenges they’ll face with money.

All of these things have made it 10x harder to handle day to day situations. It’s difficult to know how to cope and to find resources, whether it’s for COVID or help on your mental health.

“Sometimes a lot of professors don’t realize the fact this is really our first full year being in person and so the workload and the demand of the classes has been a lot more difficult,” said Rae.

Since last August, Amber Rae has been living in an apartment, since doing so, she has noticed more bills she has to pay for, the extreme cost of groceries, tuition rent and so on.

“Maintaining two jobs while working a full-time workload as a student is a lot to juggle sometimes and it definitely made things a lot more stressful,” said Rae.

As, COVID-19 started 3 years ago, it is still ongoing and students are still continuing to struggle and find help and resources and keep up with the workload, growing up and the rise of money. All of which can deeply cause someone to struggle mentally