In March 2020, as Europe began to shut down to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, few suspected the disruption would continue for over a year. All groups in society were negatively impacted but there was an assumption that one group we didn't need to worry about was the younger generation –  they would bounce back quickly once the pandemic was over. 

With the pandemic particularly preying on the higher age brackets, any risk to the young was largely ignored. But experts now believe that the physical risks of catching the virus are complex for the young – and that COVID-19 has pulled together a number of factors to create a perfect storm for young people's mental health. 

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By December 2020, 52 percent of students told a survey by the UK's National Union of Students that the pandemic had deteriorated their mental health. At that point, just 20 percent of respondents had sought mental health support.

However, the Nightline Association, a volunteer-run phone-and-text support service run by 2,500 student volunteers across 123 UK campuses, recently reported that calls discussing depression have risen by more than 50 percent since last March. 

Students set off to university expecting to broaden their horizons, to find new friends at what can be a career-defining time in their lives. Instead, they are experiencing social isolation and solitary confinement – with life-threatening results. 

One student household at the UK's world-famous Cambridge University typifies a number of the serious issues being played out in young people's lives across the country.

Uncertainty rules

The first lockdown in spring 2020 created huge uncertainty for young people. The ensuing chaos caused the cancelation of exams, confusion over the calculation of results and knock-on effects on next steps – apprenticeships, work and university places – for an entire cohort of teenagers.

"Essentially, they've never known what's going to happen next. The goalposts kept moving," says Dominique Thompson, a doctor, author and expert on young people's mental health. 

One such lost soul was Shailaja, a student from Kingston's Tiffin Grammar School. Before the pandemic she had a place at Cambridge to study her dream subject of architecture. 

"Our generation has been really impacted by the pandemic," she tells CGTN. "Our A Level cancelation led to serious grade deflation, especially in my school. 

"I was initially rejected from Cambridge and faced a whole journey of U-turns and people going back on their word, so I faced a stressful journey to get to Cambridge in the first place."

Thompson notes that humans don't like to deal with uncertainty: "It's just not our natural state to be," she explains. "When you make everything uncertain, it makes people feel very anxious. So anxiety has gone up significantly around this uncertainty, as well as things like financial difficulties."

Loneliness

In 2019, there were 2.38 million students in the UK, of which around half a million were from outside the country. In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus when students arrived in September 2020, universities canceled social events and implemented strict social distancing guidelines, including self-isolation. 

The effect of these policies has been devastating for the social interactions of new students across the UK, as Thompson explains.

"It has been hugely disruptive to a very important process," she says. "Not being able to meet new friends and people – it's a vital part of the process that we go through when we move to different places, to connect and put our roots down and start meeting like-minded people." 

Thompson warns that this should not be underestimated. "Meeting new people is particularly important for those under the age of 25," she reveals. "It's actually a biological drive that they have – to spend more time with peers and less time with family." 

"We recognize that in teenagers, but that doesn't stop at 18. It actually goes on until the mid-twenties or late 20s… and whether that's to make friends, meet a life partner, learn from others – all of that is so important." 

Some students understandably decided to stay home and do their course online, cutting themselves off from both old friends who've moved away and potential new friends at college. 

Others who made the move found they were the only person in their flat – and even if there were others in the building, they couldn't see them. Still others found the social bubble they were forced into didn't suit them – and some found themselves ostracized with nowhere to turn when they fell out with others.

Thompson emphasizes the importance of social acceptance to young people. "It's another basic human need to connect with others – we don't thrive on our own all the time," she says. "Being alone or lonely affects our mood, it affects how we sleep, it affects how we learn, it affects our relationships."

"And unfortunately, it could create a vicious cycle and the mood could get very low. I would say loneliness and isolation have been two of the biggest factors to impact student mental health." 

This is not a new discovery: Scientists at the Norwegian Social Research Institute studying adolescents aged 13 to 19 found that more than one in three girls without a close friend reported experiencing depressive symptoms, while Thompson also cites a University of Bath study which suggests that youth loneliness can cause depression for years afterwards. 

However, the problem has been exacerbated by pandemic-caused isolation.

Five weeks in 'solitary confinement'

Despite the well-meaning restrictions that have desocialized them, many students have found themselves being forced to self-isolate as the virus ravaged campuses anyway. A few days after Shailaja arrived at Cambridge, her flatmate Hannah developed a temperature and a cough – symptoms of COVID-19. 

"My whole household was put into isolation," she says. "At this time, there was no system at the university to get tested on the same day. So we had to order tests by post and it took six days to arrive, which meant my household was stuck in isolation for six days."

The flatmates couldn't even lean on each other for support. "We weren't allowed to see other people, even if we had tested negative, and we weren't allowed to go outside at all… the only contact we got each day was from our classes online." Food was brought to them by a buddy system but no contact was allowed and meals were left outside the room with a knock at the door. 

Only six days after the flatmates left isolation, another girl in the household tested positive for coronavirus and the flat was thrown back into isolation for a further two weeks. The circular nature of the virus meant that this particular university household spent five of the first eight weeks at Cambridge in self isolation.

Towards the end of the eight weeks, Cambridge University felt able to loosen the COVID-19 restrictions for self-isolation. "We were allowed about one hour a day to walk around the grounds of college," explains Hannah, which was greatly appreciated even if it "only applied to us for about two days because the isolation was over." 

Thompson worries about the impact of these conditions on students: after all, similar solitary-confinement methods have been used in prison and even as a method of torture.  

"We actually use isolating people as a punishment," she says. "It has been since the very earliest days of cavemen. If the person was banished out of the tribe and out of the cave, they didn't survive very long because without all the people around us, we don't do well."

Certainly Shailaja didn't cope well with the confinement, and the effects were not merely psychological. "I experienced really physical symptoms of depression, which I've never really experienced before," she reveals. "I would really struggle to wake up. I'm a clean person and my room was an absolute tip – and I struggled to keep up with basic levels of self-care: showering and eating proper meals." 

Online communication didn't seem to help. In fact, Shailaja noticed it might even make things worse. "You think 'I can still FaceTime people, I can still Skype people,' but with the lack of physical human interaction, the isolation really, really gets you."

Cambridge University, like many others, offered professional support to students suffering in the pandemic. "I do maintain that the system of accessing mental health support, whether that be through counseling or CBT, has always been great," says Shailaja, "especially last time when I felt the need to use those facilities and I found myself being able to access those when I wanted to." 

Even leaving isolation brought little improvement. "We still had that really numbing feeling of just being alone for weeks on end. That took us a while to recover from, just because of how traumatic it was." 

Dangerously impaired

In mid-November, despite the UK being in a second lockdown, the flatmates were excited to emerge from their second self-isolation – but then events took a further twist. 

Hannah was finding it increasingly hard to study. "I started to feel really tired during the day," she recalls. "One night I went to bed early, then I woke up in the middle of the night and went into the bathroom. 

"I remember feeling really dizzy and experiencing really bad chest pain, which I found really alarming because I've never had chest pain before. I texted two of my friends in my household and they helped me arrange a taxi and took me to A&E."

At first the hospital ran tests on Hannah's heart but couldn't find anything and discharged her the next day - but a few hours later the symptoms worsened. "The chest pain came back and this time I had a rash which appeared across my chest and sort of on my face blotches appeared on my face... I looked up the symptoms of sepsis and they sort of aligned with what I was experiencing so I called 111 and that's when they sent an ambulance."

Hannah was admitted as an emergency case and blood tests found that her liver and kidney function were dangerously impaired. They concluded that Hannah's bout of COVID-19 a month before had led to complications and organ inflammation. She was admitted to the ICU and hospitalized for a week.

With the prevailing impression that younger people are under less threat from COVID-19, Hannah was shocked that she could have had such a life-threatening reaction. 

"I think the universities have also subscribed to the narrative that 18 to 25-year-olds are completely fine, but it's just not true," she says. 

While dealing with her own bout of COVID-19, Shailaja has been shaken by Hannah's experience. "It's a terrifying thought that if me and my flatmate hadn't been awake at that time, Hannah would have been suffering on her own with this – something seriously bad could have happened."

Now both Shailaja and Hannah are living with the consequences of having contracted the virus in their first term. Long COVID-19 has taken its toll on them in different ways.

"I still get peaks and troughs of exhaustion," says Hannah. "I will randomly slip for a couple of days into really deep tiredness where I find it really difficult to do anything. I'm almost certain it is as a result of COVID-19 because I hadn't had that at all before this hospitalization."

Shailaja's symptoms have taken a different form. "As I was driving home for Christmas, I started experiencing quite heavy chest pain and just the feeling of a huge weight on my chest and on my back, sort of crushing my lungs," she explains. "I was a young, healthy person and I shouldn't have been experiencing pain in my chest like this.

"I later realized that it was the muscles between my ribs contracting as a result of Long COVID-19 symptoms. It got to the point where I was just exhausted all the time. I did a lot of cardio exercise and things like that previously, but I had gotten to the point where I couldn't walk to the end of my road without being absolutely shattered and out of breath."

Bitter disappointment turns to anger

According to a survey by Save the Student, at the start of the academic year only 10 percent of students stayed at home – but by the spring term, 35 percent were living at home either through choice or government restrictions. Few have been able to access accommodation refunds, and there is growing anger among students at the way they have been treated.  

Shailaja feels strongly about how students have been portrayed in the pandemic. "Students are not the scapegoats, they're not the people to blame for the situation," she insists. "The assumption with us was that the reason we have been put in five weeks of isolation is because we were we were partying too much and we were socializing illegally – which was so far from the truth." 

Hannah is hopeful that her experience will help others to take the virus and their mental health more seriously, and she has a simple suggestion. "If you are in isolation, then make an appearance somehow every day just to say that you are OK, both mentally and physically, and that you're not in danger in any sort of way."

Shailaja worries that the end of lockdown won't be the end of the problem for her generation. "I think we have to be braced for a huge mental health crisis as a result of this pandemic," she warns. "There aren't enough resources to support this huge cohort of students who are just going to be really damaged."

Thompson believes students have lost more than their freedom in the pandemic.

"They had hopes and dreams about how they will go to university or travel to other countries – and those have been crushed," she says. "It's very easy to be dismissive, but they are living through that disappointment."

The toll on that generation's mental health will not be something that can be easily overcome.

"Emotionally and mentally, our youngest generation are the ones who have been impacted and will be for the longest time," says Thompson. "They'll carry that weight and that burden forward – the impact of the pandemic has hit them hardest."

Video editing: Steve Chappell