What is the impact that Covid 19 had and the responses that people had with their

mental health and well-being depending on their gender, race, and professional

stage?

Maria Eugenia Ramirez Rodriguez

School of Business and Management, City University of Seattle

ENG102_11_on: English Composition II

Sofía Fernández López

March 17, 2024

 Introduction

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the whole world took a turn. It was difficult for

many people to adapt to this change because when it arrived, it did so suddenly,

changing everything from one day to the next. People do not usually react in a good

way to these types of changes, of course, this depends a lot on the person but in

general, it can be said that everyone was affected by Covid 19 at least somewhat.

There are different types of people around the world. Depending on where we were

born, how we were raised, and how we develop as we grow with the culture we are

taught or decide to adapt. Because we are different people, problems affect all of us

differently. For example, in the issue of the 2020 pandemic, many people were affected

in their physical health, but others were affected in their mental health.

Physical health is vital for every human to function properly and do not catch any

diseases. Most people that suffer from immune diseases or any other illnesses like

diabetes, pulmonary illness, among others, are most probable to get ill if a pandemic

hits their environment. The covid-19 pandemic had an impact on people from some

racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. that persisted all throughout 2021. During this year,

it was shown that hospitalization and mortality rates for black, Latin, and American

Indian children are higher that white children in a worrying trend. This is where we can

really realize the differences in the impacts that this disease had on people.

When referring to mental health, we can often say that it is something that cannot

be seen, that it only happens within people, and they should deal with it alone. Mental

health goes beyond that, it can even affect people's surroundings since a person with
mental health problems behaves differently with others, not only with themselves. A

person with mental health problems can be affected economically, physically and

socially. In the case of the pandemic, many cases of aggravated mental health could be

seen thanks to the fact that many people could not leave their homes, fell into

depression, were fired from their jobs or even being alone always affected them greatly.

An important topic that will be addressed will be the use of drugs or substances

during and after the pandemic, the statistics on how Covid 19 also affected this aspect.

It could be said that the use of drugs was necessary to cure the disease because this

was a new one and nothing was known about the cure or the actual treatment of it. It

was all experimentation and looking for a vaccine so that everyone was protected.

Thanks to this, it may be that many people have used different substances but beyond

that, we will see how people did not have good mental health and it encouraged them to

use drugs to relax or feel better about themselves.

In this investigation we will be able to find the differences in the impact that Covid

19 had on people around the world, taking into account different aspects to be able to

make a good comparison and have good statistics. It includes percentages and

numbers that make all of this more accurate and help us better represent the data. We

also analyze the use of the principles of equity in physical and mental health and

community participation to address disparities since, as is known, thanks to the Internet

it was possible to have a very large community of support that could not have been

achieved in years ago, this It was what kept everyone together and where you could

discover all the new information that came out about the topic.
 Covid-19 Pandemic: Important Impacts on Our Society

Was covid 19 a big impact on our society? There are many ways that covid 19

could have impacted on us, but as we know, the man parts that were affected was our

physical and mental health. Mental health and substance use concerns remain high

three years after the covid 19 pandemic, this including adults believing that the country

is facing mental health crisis. Studies show that thanks to the isolation and loneliness

that was experienced during the pandemic, people's mental health deteriorated further,

which meant that even after the pandemic ended, the symptoms of poor mental health

continued. To better understand this topic, we can first begin by describing what mental

health is and how it affects people after a specific event. Some people say that mental

health can be considered as someone’s Achilles heel as when this fails, everything else

can fall apart rapidly. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social

well-being. This affects how we think, fell and act while making decisions. It also helps

determine how we can handle specific situations like stress make make healthy

choices. As it is known, it is very important to have a good mental and physical health

equally, as sometimes they go together.

When mental health is affected, thanks to numerous situations, some

consequences can be noticed such as problems in our physical health, difficulty in

making decisions or even in how we interact with the people around us. Many times,

this leads to a worse case in which the use of drugs is taken as a resource. This is not

healthy at all, and it is a topic that was very popular when COVID 19 began since due to

people's isolation, they began to use drugs as either comfort to feel better in difficult

times or just because it made them think in different things tat maintained their minds
occupied. Thanks to various statistics on anxiety symptoms and depressive disorders, a

calculation can be made with percentages of adults with these same symptoms

prevailed, giving us approximately 30-36% of the population from April 2020 to February

2023.

Covid 19 and mental health of the population

There have been many concerns about how mental health has affected the

population all around the world since the pandemic hit. Studies have shown that the

pandemic has led to increased anxiety, depression, drug overdose deaths, and suicide

which affects different types od communities such as of color and youth. (Panchal et al.,

2023)

As time has passed, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a good job in

which you can last due to the large number of students and graduates who join every

year due to the opportunity that is given to everyone to study. As a result of the

pandemic, as we know, many businesses and companies were forced to close or cut

staff, which had a great impact on society. Considering the high levels of anxiety and

depression that currently exist in people's health, it can be said that something must

have happened for these levels to rise, which is why the studies carried out after covid

19 show us that many of these situations where people's mental health worsened was

because there were large job losses from one day to the next where it was not easy to

find a new one since many companies closed their doors and cut staff or simply went

bankrupt. This greatly affected the countries' economies, so we can say that the

pandemic had a very serious socioeconomic impact from which we are still recovering,

and in my opinion, we will continue recovering for several more years. As of today,
many companies have reopened their businesses, started new ones or even started

hiring more staff as sales and the economy have been advancing.

Now, job loss was not the only factor that caused these levels to increase more

and more. Studies show us that due to the almost zero contact that was had with people

abroad and the daily things that we used to do, people stopped socializing so they fell

into depression without even knowing it and without being able to seek psychological

help due to confinement. . Many of these people resort to the use of drugs or alcohol to

alleviate their symptoms and others even resort to suicide.

Impacts of covid 19 on racial and ethnic minority groups (US)

As is known, Covid-19 reached all parts of the world in a very short period of

time, that is, it spread very quickly and there was no time to prepare for it. Many

countries did not have the necessary resources to maintain this disease and offer

medical help to their people, that is why it is important to include these types of sources

that tell us about how it was even more risky in minority communities for the disease to

be transmitted to each other. themselves. Communities with higher racial and ethnic

minority populations have higher housing density, more insecurity, scarcity of potable

water and more social distancing.

Having a comparison of how the covid affected in different parts of the world and

ethnic groups, is very important because most people talk about how it affected to the

united states or our country, but knowing the whole story of every country is also

something that should be taken into account, this because it was a global pandemic,

this means it affected the whole world so the whole world should be involved in the
researches. As this was taken into consideration, it was concluded that Black, Latin, and

American Indian persons have been hospitalized and died at a higher rate than White

people consistently since the start of the pandemic.

In a study conducted in 35 different states, the average black to white people

crude death rate disparity ratio is 1.6. American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native

Hawaiian people have the highest incident cases and deaths per 100,000 populations

for most of the pandemic (Tai et al., 2021) These types of studies must be considered

since there are more risk factors in some ethnic groups than in others, such as

diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Some affect certain people more than others.

Impacts on the different ages during covid 19

Men and women as we know, have different statistics as they take some things

differently. In this source you can find statistics on how this disease impacted each of

them. Before the pandemic, each group of people, depending on their sex, race and

ethnicity, had their own life expectancy. We can now start to talk about how all of these

affected different ages.

Normally we are used to saying that young people are the least affected by these types

of terminal illnesses since yes, there are many healthy young people compared to the

older population, but it is also important to consider that there are more and more young

people who have been suffering from other diseases since before covid 19. All of this

greatly affects how your body fights these types of serious diseases. A study indicates

that younger Americans are more likely to view the virus as a major threat to their
personal finances, with 49% of adults aged 18 to 29 stating it is a major threat to their

financial situation. (Pew Research Center, 2020)

Now, as we talked about previously, the loss of work was one of the biggest factors and

impacts of the pandemic since this gave rise to many problems in people's mental

health, in the economy of the countries and in their physical health because many

people did not even have money to eat. This is why it could be concluded that job

disruption during the pandemic is most common among adults younger than 50, with

54% experiencing job or wage loss.

 Conclusion

Learning about the impacts of covid-19 can be scary sometimes, this because most

people had some bad experiences during this time and would not want to remember it

at all. But like all things that are difficult to hear, they are necessary sometimes. Since

many of us live with a blindfold on our eyes trying to forget this part of our lives when

there are still people in the world affected by this disease, with no physical or mental

consequences.

For us to be able to achieve a change and help those who were most affected, it is

necessary to be aware that these impacts are still present with us and can worsen with

many factors such as social networks, which we know are something that can hurt. to a

person if they are not careful enough with what they are seeing or who they share their

information with. Being aware that this disease affected us all, because it was a global

pandemic, we have to know that not all of us were affected equally, some had it worse

than others.

We can say that our pandemic was only about staying locked in our homes with our

family and we could have food, entertainment and communication with people from

outside, but just as this happened, the reality for many more was something worse,

since they did not have a house to get to, they were much more exposed to these

diseases, there was no food and much less work for these people to get and support

themselves. It was all a game of dominoes, one thing led to another. People who

couldn't get a job to support themselves fell into depression and even used drugs or

suicide as an escape. And to date, there are still people affected by covid-19 who do not

have access to psychological health and use drugs as an escape.

 References

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health/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/

Tai, D. B. G., Sia, I. G., Doubeni, C. A., & Wieland, M. L. (2021). Disproportionate

Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups in the United States: a 2021

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-021-01170-w

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https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/06/16/experiences-with-the-covid-19-

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