The mental health impact of COVID-19 on pre-registration nursing students in Australia

Abstract

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented changes across the globe challenging every aspect of what was previously considered 'usual' or 'normal' life. Everyday aspects of previous life as we knew it has changed and impacted our personal lives, employment, education, community connections, and social activities. For many people, the impact of these changes in previous pandemics has resulted in psychological distress (Usher <i>et al.</i> 2020a), associated with high levels of uncertainty leading to feelings of despair, hopelessness, despair, grief, and loss of purpose across individuals, families, and communities (Usher <i>et al.</i> 2020b). Isolation strategies, imposed to contain the spread of the infection, also led to significant social and economic consequences across the community, resulting in increased deleterious psychosocial outcomes (Usher <i>et al.</i> 2020c). Health workers have been consistently shown to experience higher levels of anxiety and depression related to pandemics than the general public (Bettinsoli <i>et al.</i> 2020; Gómez-Duran <i>et al.</i> 2020) and a recent study exploring impacts of COVID-19 reported that health workers experienced unpleasant emotions such as fear, hyper-arousal, intrusive memories and insomnia, and emotional exhaustion (Braquehais <i>et al.</i> 2020).</p>