EFFECTS OF GLOBAL EVENTS ON DAILY LIFE------ BY MEGHA

 

 How global events impact our lives? Each one of you who is reading this right now has experienced the impact of a global event (pandemic) this last year. So, let’s talk about that today. Two years ago the terms like “Lockdown”,“Social distancing”,“Mask mandates” were unknown to most of us. Today they are part of our everyday language as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of our lives.

Let’s talk about mental health!!

We all thought that 2020 was the worst year and we will never see anything worse than that. But then came “the year 2021”, which affected people’s lives not only physically but mentally and emotionally too. Stress is a natural and expected response to any health crisis, but stress unexpectedly increases when everyone around you is getting infected, that is the time you feel most vulnerable.

Questions like- Will this pandemic end or get worse? Will my anxiety end or get worse? Impacts your mental health even more. Different groups are facing different mental health problems. Young children are showing behavioral problems after not being able to get out of their homes and play outside or meet their friends. Students who are in schools and colleges are not able to attend their life’s big events like freshers and farewells which is making them anxious. Adults are losing their jobs, they are worried about their finances. And on top of all this, there is the grief of losing their loved ones due to this virus.

Whether you worry about yourself, your family, friends, or coworkers, there’s no getting away from the fear of becoming infected with the Covid-19 virus. Ongoing fear is a symptom of anxiety, which in turn affects your appetite, causes lack of sleep, and significantly impacts your ability to cope with your daily life. 

Millions more without food

In a developing country like India where thousands of children were already malnourished this pandemic has made millions more without food. Beyond education children are also vulnerable to the global rise in food insecurity, affecting people in both urban and rural areas.

Before this pandemic when students were allowed to go to school in countries like India, government schools used to provide mid-day meals, which made sure that children who were going to school were at least getting a one-time proper meal in the whole day. Even now the government and many NGOs are providing meals to the poor, but it is not enough. Still, there are thousands of families who are sleeping on an empty stomach and are not getting enough nutrition to fight this virus.  

Now let’s talk about those who have food on their table but due to stress and anxiety have lost their appetite. As mentioned above there are a lot of people who are going through a lot of stress which is affecting their eating habits. There are a lot of youngsters who are living alone and have zero house help right now. For such people managing work and household chores can be challenging. These people have developed a bad eating habit and are eating more and more processed food on daily basis.

Eating habits and lifestyle modification may threaten our health. Maintaining a correct nutrition status is crucial especially in a period when the immune system might need to fight back. In fact, studies have shown that obese people are one of the groups with a higher risk for Covid-19 complications.

CONCLUSION

Not to sound too dramatic but we do we all remember reading about World Wars in history books and how it had a great impact on people's daily life. Well, the situation in this pandemic is nearly the same. We can see people dying, losing their loved ones, buried in debts, sleeping with an empty stomach, loss of property, economy of the country falling and because of all these people developing mental health issues like stress and anxiety. Well, I just want to say, we are in this together and “This shall too pass”.