Mental health challenges
Mitigating public health measures towards COVID-19 resulted in widespread mental health issues in individuals working remotely and having less social interactions with family and friends (2020). University students are particularly in danger of adverse psychological impacts during the crisis and in the face of unprecedented uncertainties regarding their ongoing coursework, research, and graduations. This resulted in difficulty in coping and increased rate of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression (Odriozola-Gonzalez, Planchuelo-Gomez, Irurtia, & de Luis-Garcia, 2020). Therefore, addressing mental health of the students by developing comprehensive psychological crisis interventions are recommended (Y. Bao, Sun, Meng, Shi, & Lu, 2020). Preliminary evidence suggest that higher exposure to the social media “infodemic” can exacerbate the psychological impact of COVID-19 (Gao et al., 2020; Zarocostas, 2020) and thus timely and open communications is required at all levels of university administration. Self-isolation during the pandemic can compound the psychological distress of the students. A secondary school principal in China has opted to be optimistic and while shutting down the school to stop spreading SARS-CoV-2, worked hard to spread smiles (Leland, 2020). University presidents and faculty deans have intuitively adopted this compassionate strategy across the globe. Although, professors seem to experience lower rates of negative physiological impacts due to COVID-19 (Odriozola-Gonzalez et al., 2020), they are equally faced with uncertainties. This is especially true for early career investigators who might be more severely impacted by the disruption of their scientific work and unavailability of funds for non-COVID related projects. Given the unprecedented nature of events, extraordinary measures should be put in place to ensure physical and mental well-being of students and professors while alleviating any potential negative career impacted in the long-term.