Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on school-going adolescents studying in government schools - A psychosocial perspective

Childhood is the most essential phase in a person's life as the foundations laid at this stage decide the future. Children are one of the vulnerable groups during any disaster. It is a stressful event that is not easily understood. It is emotionally confusing and frightening and results in children needing significant instrumental and emotional support from adults. To understand the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on school-going adolescents. This study adopted a cross-sectional research design in which sociodemographic characteristics and the CRIES-13 were administered to all the 312 children studying in 9 and 10 grade from the five selected schools. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, mean, and percentages were employed to analyse participants' demographic characteristics. Chi-square, independent -test, and ANOVA were used for comparison of the data. The mean age of the respondents was 15 years (SD 0.98). It was found that most of the children (90.4%) had disturbances in their education, with 10 grade children having more disturbance than 9 grade ones ( value < 0.05). Further, intrusion and arousal were found to be significantly higher among male children than female children ( value < 0.05). Also, intrusion and arousal are significantly higher among 9 grade students, whereas avoidance is higher among 10 grade students ( value < 0.05). The study identified that COVID-19 has a profound psychosocial impact on school going-adolescents. This finding highlights the importance of understanding the pandemic's impact on children from a psychosocial perspective and designing appropriate interventions for them.