The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Developing Nations: Emerging Mental Health Challenges and Interventions

The world is facing an unprecedented challenge of the 21st century in the form of COVID-19 outbreak. People across the culture, race, ethnicity, socio-economic background are being affected by the rippling effects of this pandemic. The aim of this narrative review is to briefly describe the impact of the pandemic on mental health, the vicious cycle of social issues and psychological health caused and aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. We also aim to highlight certain interventions to overcome the mental health challenges posed by the pandemic. For this purpose, a thorough search of all databases was done to gather articles relevant to the objective of this narrative review. Keywords were used in combination and separately to identify the articles on the various psychosocial issues caused by the pandemic. Published articles in various databases like Scopus, Web of Science, Pubmed etc., related to psychosocial effects due to COVID-19 were searched and summarized to justify and support the objective of this paper. The coming months will reveal the extent of damage this pandemic has caused to the socio-economic and health sectors across the globe. It is crucial to recognize the psychosocial impact of this pandemic and necessitate the measures to overcome them by mobilizing the resources we have at hand

Daytime-sleepiness, factors affecting sleep and sleep-quality among professional college students of South India - A correlative study

Introduction: Sleep is a vital function that helps the body and mind to get recharge. Good sleep assists the body to remain healthy and expanse itself from diseases. Decreased hours of sleep and sleep quality directly impact the way of life a person lives, especially for a student. Objective: This study aimed to assess and find the relationship between daytime sleepiness, factors affecting sleep, and sleep quality among students studying in professional colleges. Methods: A correlational study was conducted among 400 professional college students from selected colleges in south Karnataka, India. Data was collected using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and a structured questionnaire to assess the factors affecting sleep. Results: The study revealed that 192 (47.8%) of professional college students rated moderate excessive daytime sleepiness, and 220 (55%) of students had poor quality of sleep. There is a strong correlation found between sleep quality and daytime sleepiness (r = 0.569, p= <0.001), and a weak relationship between sleep quality and lifestyle and habitual factors (r = 0.201, p= <0.001), and environmental factors affecting sleep (r = 0.235, p=<0.001) while a week relationship was found between daytime sleepiness and psychological factors affecting sleep (r = 0.20, p=<0.001). Conclusion: The study highlighted the need to focus on creating strategies to help professional students with poor sleep quality to improve their sleep quality and quality of life. Thus, an informational booklet on sleep hygiene practices was provided to the students