The influence of the corona pandemic and the associated distance teaching on the health behavior of students at HAW-Hamburg, with a special focus on mental health : Inclusion of the project SuSy

Abstract

Background COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. It is primarily transmitted via droplets and can be associated with a wide range of symptoms. The disease spread from the Chinese megacity of Wuhan starting in December 2019, presumably after the virus jumped from an animal to a human at a pet market there. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic as of March 2020. In the first phase of the coronavirus, which began around December 2019, China was the most affected, then other "hotspots" could be found in Europe, the United States of America and South America. In the summer of 2020, the incidence dropped noticeably again for the first time, whereupon the second phase began in September 2020 with a renewed increase in the number of cases. Due to this corona situation, university and college events have been taking place online for almost three semesters now, but studying under corona conditions poses many problems and challenges for students. Methods To answer the main question, a questionnaire was created, which was analyzed with the help of SPSS. Data from the surveillance system "SuSy" was also available, which was also analyzed with the help of SPSS. The specially developed questionnaire was completed online in German by the students of HAW Hamburg/Bergedorf; if required, an English version of the questionnaire was also available. The study was conducted in the form of a mainly quantitative survey, although qualitative questions were specifically added in order to obtain more detailed information on certain questions. Results The mental health of students during the pandemic was rated significantly worse than before the corona pandemic, with 25.5% of students rating their mental health as very good before the pandemic and only 3.2% during the pandemic. Likewise, a large number of students reported feeling mentally upset during the pandemic period (69.4%), feeling stressed (70.4%), and finding the online lectures stressful (72.4%). The health behavior of the students with regard to alcohol and cigarette consumption also changed, with 9.2% of the students having started smoking and 19.4% smoking significantly more. Alcohol consumption showed similar results, with 5.1% of the students having started to consume alcohol and 10.2% reporting drinking significantly more alcohol than before the pandemic. Discussion The results support evidence that the corona pandemic and associated distance are associated with poorer mental health and may influence student health behaviors. It should be noted that bias may have influenced the results. The interviews revealed that many factors can have an impact on students' mental health, which can also result from distance learning, for example, a high stress level resulting from distance learning is a factor that can negatively impact students' mental health. Further research is needed in this area and a re-survey would be useful to determine a long-term effect. In particular, long-term research is needed to understand the relationships between different factors and to draw conclusions about the causes.