Has COVID-19 made DU students more anxious?

By Taj Inalsingh

Student stressed over recent invitation
[Photo by Luke Patterson, with Taj Inalsingh]

The current pandemic has had major effects on everybody’s lives since it started two years ago. Whether it has affected people’s jobs or peoples family, everybody has felt the impact that COVID-19 has had on us all. One of the major impacts of COVID-19 was the effect that it had on our social lives.

COVID-19 has obviously had a huge impact on the world at large but also has had a much more localized impact as it has heavily impacted students here at University of Denver.

It has brought extra stress and anxiety into our lives and this has become even more apparent since these mandates are beginning to be lifted. According to Trevor Timmons, a first year here at University of Denver is one of many DU students who have been impacted by the pandemic. “Social anxiety was a huge thing for me. Wearing a mask in class and actually seeing people look at you and having people actually see your face after wearing masks for two years. Before covid I didn’t even think about any of those things, however since being back maskless in classes, those things have exacerbated my social anxiety.”

This is also backed up by statistics, as stated by The Lancet “the pandemic led to a 27% increase in cases of major depressive disorders and 25% increase in cases of anxiety disorders globally.”

Another reason for the sudden rise of anxiety and depression could be due to what Tobin Tossone said, a second year here at University of Denver “At the beginning of COVID-19 nobody didn’t saw anyone because everyone was super scared of getting COVID-19. Everyone that went and saw people in the beginning of covid was shunned for doing so.”

This sudden change of going to school and hanging out with your friends to seeing absolutely nobody could’ve had a major impact on us as humans because we crave social interactions, as humans are very social creatures. As Health Affairs said, “Efforts to contain the virus’ transmission through stay-at-home orders, quarantine, and social distance advice have worsened an already serious problem.”

Luke Patterson, a freshman year at DU said he thinks another reason for the increase in depression and anxiety rates was increased isolation. “Over time wearing masks and being isolated has conditioned my mind to not want to be around large groups of people. Making me a lot less comfortable around large groups of people, my brain freaks out when I’m near large groups of people because it’s been two years of conditioning by the same societal and medical norms that we are not used to, it definitely influences your brain to almost be socially anxious.”

Patterson provided excellent reasoning for this as the conditioning of your brain to not want to be around people could definitely serve as the cause for this rise in anxiety and depression.

All of these reasons could be responsible for the rise in anxiety and depression but also for exacerbating peoples’ more introverted sides. A very clear example of this would be in this as this article by The Wire in the UK that follows a woman by the name of Francesca who goes through a very similar experience.

This isn’t just a one case example either. As Graham Jatinen said, “I used to love people and love talking and meeting new people. I would always be hanging out with people all of the time. Comparatively to now, where I don’t really hangout with people nearly as much and my once extroverted self is now introverted.”