Did The Coronavirus Affect Students’ Mental Health?

The covid-19 outbreak made a big change in everyone’s lives such as having to wear masks, having to quarantine, having to go to school online, etc. 

With all this space and time to spare it could definitely positively or negatively affect the mental well-being of students, and the 7th-grade counselor, Ms. Smithgall, had some things to say about it.

 CPM Counselor Riley Smithgall says, “One thing I have noticed as a positive is that students had an opportunity to see a very different style or school or a very different experience outside of our typical Monday-through-Friday going in-person to school.” and went on to explain that because of those reasons student’s found how they thrive or figure out their best connection to the school, whether it’s online or in person.

She also thinks, “It just definitely left a lot of students feeling disconnected and decrease on motivation and energy and things like that, which come back in person, I think, it just took a little bit of time and maybe still many are still feeling this way of building back that motivation of being back in person. Especially for all you 7th and 8th graders who before this covid experience, were in an elementary setting and then had to shift into a very different school experience.”

Ms. Smithgall also explains that she believes that covid-19 and quarantine have had these types of effects on students because, “Covid was so unexpected and uncertain and there was a lot of, kind of fear and big changes that happened.” Which left less support we had access to within school, teachers, family, and friends.

She also had some things to say about how students feel about asking for help such as, “Starting at the beginning of the school year I noticed that a lot of students and also just conversations that were happening in classrooms really allowed people’s feelings to be validated and for students to really understand or have access to additional supports if they needed it.”

Lastly, she had one last thing she wanted to say to students and that was, “I hope that every student at College Place Middle School really feels proud of themselves because the experiences that you all have had moving into your middle school experience have been really challenging like covid was a really challenging experience that all of you have been really resilient through and you’ve continued to show up at school and try your best and it’s really important to just recognize that when we are going through kind of a collective traumatic experience or experiencing something that feels really challenging.”