Abstract:

Anxiety at school has been reported by many studies. Recently, Brazil was named the country with the most cases of depression and anxiety during the SARS-coV2 pandemic. It topped a list of 11 countries and reported that 63% of symptoms related to anxiety. This research aims to analyse the effects of lockdown on students’ lives, highlighting health, family and teaching dimensions. 39 elementary school and 3rd grade high school students, aged between 14 and 19 years old, of both public and private schools of Santana/Amapá municipality participated in this study [64% female (n=25) and 36% male (n=14)]. This is a quantitative and descriptive study, in which the data collection was carried out through an online questionnaire. Results indicate that 41% (n=16) of the students suffer from severe anxiety with female group being the most affected (48%, n=12) as compared to male (29%, n=2). Of all the participants, 64% refer waking up several times during the night and 41% feeling sleepy when they wake up. Considering family relationship, 73% refer that it is normal and 22% bad or very bad, indicating that the majority of the students who reported having a dysfunctional family relationship and suffered from severe anxiety did not speak to anyone and were almost always in their room. Closing face-to-face classes aroused some feelings such as «sad», «destroyed», «terrible» and «anguished». Regarding remote classes, 65% refer they feel more or less and 22% feel terrible. The main complaints include having to get up early, not being able to follow the lessons, not being able to understand and being restless during the lessons. In conclusion, classes closing, lockdown and remote classes have impaired students’ mental health leading to severe anxiety, sleep disorder and family relationship problems. These facts are worrying, since Amapá State has a high suicide rate among adolescents. So, educational prevention policies are urgently needed.

Keywords:

Lockdown, elementary school, student anxiety, remote classes, prevention.