key: cord-0860551-r959g8xz
authors: Chen, Qiaohong; Nie, Guohui; Yan, Bin; Huang, Yeen
title: Mental health burden for Chinese middle school students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
date: 2020-06-20
journal: Asian J Psychiatr
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102251
sha: 05d40a5f00445eee9db4498f44ea8fd226e3ee53
doc_id: 860551
cord_uid: r959g8xz

nan

From January 2020 to May 2020, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused a huge impact on the Chinese people, especially young people in school. Starting from the end of February 2020, many primary and middle school students were forced to take online courses at home due to long-term isolation. Because the college and high school entrance examination were particularly concerned in China, the pressure of preparing for the exams and the impact of the pandemic have brought a double psychological burden to the middle school students. On March 31, 2020, the Chinese government announced that the college entrance examination would be postponed for one month (delayed from June 7th-8th to July 7th-8th) due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic (Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, 2020). Similarly, the time of the high school entrance examination has also been delayed by one month to one and a half months in different provinces and cities.

Although the delay in the college or high school entrance examination would bring more preparation time for the middle school students, some students reported that the extended time actually increased the duration of their psychological stress (XINHUANET, 2020). Moreover, July was one of the hottest months in China's summer, the year of 2020 was predicted to be one of the hottest years on record (The New York Times, 2020), and in order to prevent the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the classroom, many Chinese middle schools prohibited the use of air-conditioning and other refrigeration equipment, resulting in particularly high temperatures in the classroom. Under the adverse effects of hot weather on mood, respiratory restriction by the long-term wearing of a medical mask, and the huge psychological pressure of entering a college or high school, Chinese middle school students may face the most severe psychological challenge since the restoration of the college entrance examination policy. We suggested that parents and teachers should focus on the mental health status of middle school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those who were needed to take the college or high school entrance examination, and provided timely psychological counseling and crisis intervention to the students in need (Tandon, 2020) . Schools and local health J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f departments should address the problems of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 through air and excessive temperature in the classroom during probably the hottest summer.

This would help Chinese middle school students to effectively cope with the mental health burden from the upcoming college or high school entrance examination and extremely high temperature.

The study did not receive any funding.

None.

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