Purpose Nearly three years after the emergence of a virulent SARS-2 virus (or COVID-19) from the Wuhan epicenter, very little is known of the pandemic’s impact on the coping resources, psychological stress, and mental health outcomes among university students and instructors starting from the first public-health quarantines in early 2020. This presentation will demonstrate the profound and severe effects on the mental well-being and social functioning of university students and instructional faculty in the northern province of the Luzon island of the Philippines. Methods Instructors (N = 25) and students (N = 221), enrolled at Baguio Central University, responded to a web-based questionnaire designed to assess: financial resources and difficulties, knowing family or friend suffered or treated for infection, mental and physical health concerns and appropriate care, worries about COVID-19 threats and their coping skills. These questions were framed to the major time events related the pandemic: before quarantines began in 2020, from 2020 to end of 2021, early 2022 to present. The timeframe attempts to capture the multiple infectious waves leading to the full quarantine removals in February of 2022. Results and Implications We will present descriptive and inferential statistics to demonstrate the incidence rates of mental health problems and their relationships to gender, work/student status, financial resources. Social functioning will also be examined. For example, 86% of students who were depressed, between 2020 and end of 2021, knew someone depressed during the same period. We will discuss the important implications from the research findings to guide planning.

Authors:
Paul DuongTran, California State University Dominguez Hills, United States
Gina Casi, Baguio Central University, Philippines
Hilario Sanglay, Baguio Central University, Philippines

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Paul DuongTran is Professor of Social Work at CSU Dominguez Hills. My research and clinical practice since 1993 have focused on social adaptation to alleviate health disparity and inequity in the US, Southeast and Pacific Asia.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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