Perceived Mental Health Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic and Health Related Quality of Life Among Students Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka

Abstract

The COVID-19 health crisis has reached pandemic scale spreading globally which gave rise to the need to examine the perceived mental health impact of covid-19 pandemic and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among students in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. It was a cross-sectional survey design and four Research questions guided the study. The population of the study consisted of 5000 undergraduate students from Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.

The random sampling technique was used to select 300 undergraduate university students in 10 different academic departments under Faculty of Education. The researcher developed a questionnaire titled Perceived Mental Health Impact of Covid-19 Questionnaire (PMHICQ), which was used for the study. The instrument was subjected to both face and content validity by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach alpha reliability method. The reliability yielded coefficient of 0.80 which indicated a positive and high reliability and the instrument was considered reliable and acceptable for the study.

The data collected was analyzed using a mean score. The study revealed that undergraduate in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University has a good perception of covid-19, and experienced a mental health impact of covid-19 which affected them in one way or the other during the covid-19 pandemic.

The study concluded that the perception of undergraduate students depends mainly on their beliefs that Covid-19 exists and was transmitted from one person to another and also their attitude, behavior and aspects of mental health of the students which involved Post Traumatic System Disorders, symptoms of depression, stress, anxiety, and that they were affected by covid-19, especially during the lockdown period. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that prevention and intervention approaches to attenuate the psychosocial impact should be an integral component of crisis response during pandemic conditions.