6. Findings
6.6. Psychosocial well-being
6.6.1. Mental health effects related to COVID-19 pandemic lifestyle changes
85 Figure 6.5.3: Respondent's perceptions about cyber-crime at different times (N=2,357)
All respondents were asked to give their opinion on the frequency of cybercrimes, regardless of the type of ownership of a mobile phone. For those who responded that it did increase, a rise accompanied by gradual falls can be seen during the first lockdown. This is reflected in the drop during the first lockdown for those who thought cybercrimes decreased. This is consistent with the findings of significant increases in time spent daily on mobile phones. Lastly, the figures for those who think it did not change are relatively stagnant across time.
Regarding cybercrimes, adolescents were asked which of the following incidents happened to them or they did it themselves. These include: (i) sharing offensive/threatening content, (ii) lying about someone on the internet, (iii) sharing one’s photo with someone, (iv) forcing someone to do something by threatening to disclose/disclosing that person’s photo/video, (v) hacking someone else’s phone/computer, (vi) scamming someone online, and (vii) trying to add someone in a group online that practices violence. For each of the periods, in each of these options mentioned above, more than 95% of respondents stated they did not partake or have this happen to them. The figures are not significantly different for males and females.
86 depression, irritation/hopelessness, suicide and self-harm tendency, and tendency to take drugs for entertainment. These indicators were taken from various widely used mental health indices (King, 2018) to measure mental health among adolescents in Bangladesh.
Figure 6.6.1: Percentage of individuals sleeping less than eight hours (N=1828)
Around 79% of adolescents said that they did not feel a lack of sleep between January and March 2020. The rate decreased from April to May 2020 and June 2020 to March 2021, while it increased again in September 2021. Individuals who felt moderate to extreme lack of sleep show the same trend as individuals who did not have a lack of sleep. Individuals who felt extreme sleep deprivation was 2.83% and 1.42% from January 2020 to March 2020, whereas it went as high as 5.14% and 2.83%, respectively, from April 2020 to May 2020 and went down in
September 2021. It seems that during the COVID-19 lockdown, adolescents suffered from sleep deprivation and they started to recover after the lockdown period.
At least 15 years or older adolescents are around five percentage points more likely to feel sleep deprivation compared to younger adolescents. The pattern of change in different periods is similar for both older and younger age adolescents (see Table A3). There is a noticeable
difference in sleep deprivation among different districts, but there is no distinct pattern of this difference in different periods across locations (see Table A4)
There are no differences between married and unmarried and between school-going and out-of- school respondents about sleep deprivation.
The difference between male and female in sleep deprivation do not show any consistent pattern. Fluctuation of sleep deprivation is more visible among male adolescents than females.
About 77% of the female population did not feel sleep deprivation at all from January to March
13.75 9.61
11.74
15.35
3.43 5.74
6.41 4.43
2.83 5.14 3.87 2.61
1.42 2.83 1.83 1.3
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
January 2020- March 2020 April 2020- May 2020 June 2020- March 2021 Last Month[September 2021]
Very Strongly felt Strongly felt Moderately felt Slightly felt
87 2020 and the rate is quite the same from April to May 2020. The male population felt very
strong sleep deprivation more than the female population in all periods, and both of these cohorts suffered from increasing sleep deprivation during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The table however does not include those who didn’t feel sleep deprivation at all. Addition of all those who felt sleep deprivation of some degree and subtracting that number from 100 will provide us with the rate of adolescents who didn’t feel sleep deprivation at all. For instance, from January-March 2020, 17.98% of male adolescents reported suffering from some degree of sleep deprivation so 82.02% of male adolescents didn’t feel any sleep deprivation during that time.
The rate of individuals who stayed always lonely frequently increased as those who did not stay lonely decreased. The rate of adolescents who always stayed lonely was 0.89% in January–
March 2020 and the rate increased as high as 7.41% in April–March 2020, while the rate came down to less than 1% again in September 2021.
Individuals who felt lonely show a similar pattern (see Figure A5); adolescents felt lonely and stayed alone more during lockdown compared to the pre-COVID period. The rate of individuals who felt extremely lonely was lower than 1% before the lockdown (January) which increased to 8.46% during the COVID-19 lockdown. They started to recover from loneliness after the COVID- 19 lockdown was over, but the recovery rate is still lower than in the pre-COVID-19 period.
No significant difference in loneliness by sex, age, marital status, and school-going status was found. No consistent pattern was found in the variation of loneliness by districts (see Table A6) Before the pandemic, around 1% of adolescents in Cumilla, Gaibanda, and Narail were strongly affected by loneliness, while the rate increased to 10%, 9%, and 16%, respectively, during the pandemic lockdown period.
88 Figure 6.6.2: Percentage of adolescents who felt frustrated (N=1828)
Similar to sleep deprivation and loneliness, the rate of frustration also increased among
adolescents during the COVID-19 lockdown. Less than 1% of adolescents felt extreme depression before the lockdown, but the rate increased to 11.89% during the COVID-19 lockdown period.
Individuals who did not feel any frustration at all came down to 41.62% during the lockdown from 89% from January to March 2020. The rate did not reach its previous position after the lockdown period. In September, around 80% of adolescents did not feel any frustration at all. So the adolescents are recovering but very slowly. It is also possible that the COVID-19 pandemic has a long-term impact on their mental health.
A noticeable difference in the feeling of frustration is found between the male and female cohorts during and after the COVID-19 lockdown period. For instance, from April to May 2020, 8% and 16% of males and females, respectively, felt strongly frustrated. Gaibanda shows a higher rate of moderate frustration among adolescents compared to Cumilla and Narail, while the rate is lower compared to others in case of a strong feeling of frustration. No consistent difference was found for different age groups. While 12% of younger (12–14 years old) and 14%
of older adolescents felt strong frustration during the COVID-19 lockdown, the rate went down to 7% for younger and 10% for older adolescents from June 2020 to March 2021. No significant difference was found in marital and schooling status.
January 2020- March
2020 April 2020- May 2020 June 2020- March 2021
Last Month[September
2021]
extremely felt 0.93 11.89 4.1 0.82
Highly felt 1.49 13.45 8.79 1.6
Moderately felt 1.53 9.58 7.6 2.83
Slightly felt 6.93 23.47 23.32 13.67
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
89 Table 6.6.1: Percentage of adolescents feeling worried and irritation/hopelessness
Worry Irritation/hopelessness
January 2020–
March 2020
April 2020 –May 2020
June 2020–
March 2021
Last month [Septem ber 2021]
January 2020–
March 2020
April 2020–
May 2020
June 2020–
March 2021
Last month [Septe mber 2021]
Slightly
felt 8.61 23.85 23.88 15.8 6 21.54 18.48 12.22
Moderat
ely felt 2.57 10.51 9.13 5.1 1.71 9.31 7 2.87
Strongly
felt 2.38 13.41 8.31 3.58 0.93 9.46 6.78 1.68
Very strongly felt
0.67 8.79 3.43 1.68 0.52 7.38 3.28 1.04
Number of observations (N) 1828
Feeling of irritation/hopelessness and worry increased during COVID-19 and the rate recovered again after the pandemic. More than 85% of adolescents did not feel worried before COVID-19, whereas the number decreased to 43.44% during COVID-19. The rate shows signs of recovery in September, but it is still lower than the pre-COVID period. So there may be a long-term impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the mental health of adolescents. The rate of
irritation/hopelessness also shows the same trend as worry. The rate of irritation/hopelessness increased during the COVID-19 lockdown and decreased again after the lockdown.
The rate of adolescents who strongly felt worried is higher in Cumilla compared to other districts in all periods. However, other categories do not show a consistent pattern. While Gaibanda has the highest rate of adolescents who felt a little bit worried during the COVID-19 lockdown period, the rate is similar to Narail in other periods.
Older age adolescents have a higher rate of a feeling of worry in all periods and categories compared to younger adolescents. Similarly, female adolescents have a higher rate of the feeling of worry compared to males during and after COVID-19. No consistent pattern is found among married and unmarried adolescents, possibly because of the small sample size for married adolescents.
Overall, feelings of headache decreased among adolescents after the COVID-19 lockdown. We found that 57.27% of adolescents did not feel any headache at all. The rate decreased during the COVID-19 lockdown, but it increased to 66.06% in September 2021, which is a much higher rate than the pre-COVID period. The same is true for those who felt slight to very strong headaches in those periods.
90 COVID-19 did not have any considerable effect on drug usage for entertainment. During both the pre-and post-COVID-19 periods, 99% of adolescents said that their desire to take drugs for entertainment was not affected at all. However, a moderate and slight effect on the desire to use drugs for entertainment shows a trend with the COVID-19 lockdown, though the rate is very small; 0.07% and 0.45% of adolescents had a moderate and slight feeling of taking drugs which increased to 0.67% and 0.78% of adolescents, respectively. So the COVID-19 lockdown did not have a considerable impact on adolescents’ feelings about taking drugs compared to the impact on depression and irritation/hopelessness.
Similar to drug-taking behaviour, little change is observed in suicide and self-harm tendency.
There is no consistent pattern of moderate, strong, and very strong feelings of self-harm and suicide during the pre-and post-COVID-19 periods. However, the rate of adolescents who felt slight feelings of suicide and self-harm slightly increased during the COVID-19 lockdown and decreased again after the lockdown. Those who did not feel any of these feelings at all decreased during the lockdown and the rate started to recover again.
These topics are mostly considered taboo in rural areas of Bangladesh, so it is plausible that adolescents hide their true responses when responding to enumerators. So the results might not reflect adolescents’ original status because of sampling error.