Research Paper
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (Online) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (Print)
Volume 8, Issue 2, April- June, 2020
DIP: 18.01.255/20200802, DOI: 10.25215/0802.255
http://www.ijip.in
© 2020, Nagar, D., Nagar, P., & Singh, N; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Effects of age, education and employment status on mental health
during COVID-19 pandemic
Dinesh Nagar
1
*, Parul Nagar
2
, Nehal Singh
3
ABSTRACT
The rampant outbreak of COVID-19 has spread at an unconceivable rate affecting more than
215 countries across the world. In India, over 343K confirmed, 180K cases are recovered and
over 7.82m are attributable to this deadly viral disease (June, 16, 2020). In the wake of this
global health crisis, a country wide lockdown and stringent preventive and precautionary
measures have been implemented by the government to contain the spread of this virus.
Within this backdrop, the present survey was planned to examine the effect of age, education
and occupational status on the data was retrieved from the questionnaire prepared using
Google Forms. The correlational design with a total sample size of 489 respondents was
utilized. An approximately equal number of male and females located in 70 cities covering 19
states of India volunteered to participate in the survey. The data collected on these
participants was subjected to descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. The results
revealed that an overwhelmingly large percentage of respondents have understood and have
strictly abided to the precautionary and preventive guidelines issued by the government. A
large number of respondents have reported that they are facing problems during the
lockdown. Respondents were moderately involved in various educational, social and
household activates in their residential environment. Half of the respondents reported almost
no health problems while thirty and twenty percentage respondents reported psychological
health related problems sometimes and almost often respectively. The stepwise regression
results revealed that Problems encountered during lockdown, Age, Education, engagement in
online games in the residential setting uniquely predicted emotional, social and cognitive
components of Mental Health. Implications of the results are discussed.
Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemic, Lockdown, Quarantine, Preventive measures, Residential
Activities, Mental Health
A virus is a submicroscopic entity which infects living cells and causes several diseases. The
recent havoc is created by a novel strain of the coronavirus family. Coronaviruses are RNA
(Ribonucleic Acid) viruses which cause mild to lethal respiratory tract infections in human
1
Professor, Department of Psychology, Barkatullah University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
2
BDS Final Year Manipal College of Dental Sciences, Mangalore
3
Research Scholar, Department of Psychology, Barkatullah University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India
*Responding Author
Received: April 02, 2020; Revision Received: May 20, 2020; Accepted: May 25, 2020