Coping Strategies of students of High School and College for Anxiety During the Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has affected people across the globe who have experienced lockdowns, restrictions, social distancing which has impacted their psychological and mental health. Coping strategies are a cognitive and behavioural effort made by individuals to deal with challenges presented by stressful situations. This study attempts to understand the coping strategies commonly adopted by students. This study examines three different coping strategies-problem solving, seeking social behaviour and avoidance adopted by high school and college students, during the pandemic. The study tries to understand the types of coping strategies adopted by students to deal with the stressful situation and how they use ‘coping with hope’ as a coping strategy. Further, the study aims to understand whether the coping strategies are more problem solving focussed or more avoidance focussed during the pandemic for the high school and college students. 98 students were selected based on random stratified sampling and snow ball sampling techniques from Delhi Public School, Gurgaon, India. The questionnaire used for the study was based on Coping Strategy Indicator developed by Dr. James H. Amir Khan along with a self-designed questionnaire to understand the nature of activities indulged in by the subjects and their attitude towards coping with hope. Pandemic has led to an increase in stress and a higher emotional oriented coping. Family and social support helped to reduce avoidance oriented coping. The findings of the study show that during the pandemic students adopted higher avoidance coping strategy than problem solving and seeking social support coping strategy.