Increase in Fear, Anxiety and Disturbed Sleep Pattern in Media Professionals of Chhattisgarh State in India During Pandemic of Covid-19

 ¹Sudhir Kumar Upadhyay, ²Prashant Shukla

 ¹Department of Mass Communication, Kushabhau Thakre Patrakarita Avam Jansanchar Vishwavidyalaya Raipur, Chhattisgarh-492010, India

²Department of Biotechnology, School of Science and Technology, The Neotia University,

Sarisa, D.H. Road, 24 Pgs (South) West Bengal - 743 368, India

prashant19782000@gmail.com

 Abstract: With Covid-19 pandemic spreading all over the world governments were forced to take drastic measures to stop the spread. The lockdown enforced was like a natural experiment. It caused severe problems to most of the population which went under the lockdown. Only people who were allowed to report for regular work were medical and media professionals. Huge amount of literature has been churned up highlighting work done, and problem faced by medical professionals. The plight of media professionals was mostly ignored by people undertaking this kind of research. A survey conducted only among the media professionals revealed that 86% of respondents faced increased level of anxiety while 48% suffered negative impact of sleep pattern due to lockdown. The survey also threw some positive aspects of lockdown as many media professionals used their time to learn new things. Overall, the impact of lockdown on media professionals was not positive which is like other group of professionals anywhere in the world.

Keywords: Media Professionals, Covid-19, pandemic, anxiety, sleep pattern

Introduction:

The severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the virus termed as Covid-19 has developed into pandemic starting from March 2020. The speed of spread of the virus has been due to international travel density (Tsamakis et al., 2020). The severity of the disease and initial high mortality forced many national governments to take extreme measures to control the spread of the disease. These measures created unprecedented situation as such a crisis was not seen by most of the people alive. Previous studies on pandemics in 2004 (SARS) and 2009 (H1N1 influenza) highlighted the fear and panic within the communities (Chong et al., 2004; Goulia et la., 2010). A survey in China showed that people have developed moderate-to-severe anxiety due to the Covid-19 infection and its resulting measures taken by the government (Wang et al., 2020). A survey of journalists from 125 countries have identified negative emotions and psychological reactions because of pandemic (Posetti et al., 2020).A survey of journalists was done on some aspects of their life during Covid-19 caused lockdown. It was a natural global level experiment where governments forced everyone to remain at home Gruber et al. (5). The pandemic situation is still not under control at many places all over the world till the time of the survey and writing of this paper. The pandemic situation has caused severe problems to almost every section of the society and no one has been left untouched. Keeping this in mind the present work was undertaken as even though journalists are the people who undertake survey works for their profession, generally they are left out of the research work. In the present pandemic situation, the journalists have shown exemplary work and have provided us with the news as they did before the pandemic. Therefore, it was felt necessary that a survey of the journalist is done and the condition in which they are working is assessed.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic every section of society has suffered. The things which people had started taking for granted became luxury. The daily routine suffered and therefore the mental stress increased. The increased mental stress due to the pandemic could lead to other aliments if not taken care of in time. The people at the front of the pandemic i.e., medical professionals along with journalists have faced more serious challenges than other professionals. Maciaszek et al. (6) have found that anxiety symptoms and insomnia were more prevalent in medical professionals than non-medical professionals. The google scholar search for relevant literature on effects of Covid-19 on professionals yielded only the results about work done on medical professionals. It was as if other professionals have been left behind as the medical professionals have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 from the front. Even though other professionals have not directly faced the consequences of Covid-19 infection, but they have been affected by it as the measures put in by the countries have affected everyone.

 Method:

The survey was performed among the media professionals of Chhattisgarh state of India. The study was conducted in first week of January 2021. A google form was created which was distributed to the media professionals through Whatsapp groups. In present work we have employed survey through questionnaire as method to collect the data.

The https://www.google.com/forms was used to develop the questionnaire for the journalists which was send to their personal numbers and requested to fill in the information sought. The whole exercise took around 7 days to be completed as not everyone was forthcoming with the information.

Around 75 media professionals were contacted in relation to this survey and 50 of them responded with the answers.

 Result:

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused problems not only to the persons who have been unfortunate to be infected by the virus, but it has caused problems to almost everyone on the planet in one way or another. The stringent measures enforced by the countries to stop the spread also caused problems for the people. Anxiety and fear of disease was present in almost every professional who had to move out during the pandemic. The current work has shown that anxiety and fear of disease were also in the back of the minds of media professionals who were out there doing their job.

The result is given in the Table No. 1. The table shows all the answers which were given by the respondents to the questionnaire. The results tell us that media professionals were also under stress and had suffered anxiety during the lockdown periods as well as months following them.

Table No. 1: The answers to the questions as given by the respondents to the questionnaire-

86% of the respondents have said that they have faced increased level of anxiety since the start of the pandemic while just 10% have given a negative answer for the question about anxiety. A positive thing which the survey found that the media professionals utilized the time during the lockdown doing some productive work and 86% of the respondents have said that they learnt something new during the lockdown while only 8% of the respondents did not thought about utilizing their time while 6% said that they thought about learning something new but were not able to do so due to certain reasons. 48% of the respondents have termed the last 8-10 months as positive for their lives while 38% have said that these months had negative impact on their lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected sleep patterns in many social groups. In adolescents there has been a positive impact of lockdown as they have started to sleep more and feel fresher than the time when they had to go for school (Gruber et al., 2020). In the case of media professionals this has had a negative impact as 48% of the respondents have said that they started sleeping late since the first lockdown was enforced in India whereas some media professionals (42%) started sleeping earlier than before.

The biggest fear and therefore the cause of anxiety among the media professionals surveyed was the fear of contacting Covid-19 infection which was around 34.7% of the respondents. The second cause of worry in media professionals was the fear of losing job as most of the companies had started using this as cost cutting during and after the lockdown and this was similar in percentage with the worry about financial security among the media professionals.

A positive outcome of the lockdown among the respondents is that 86% have learnt something new. Out of the remaining 14%, 6% thought of learning something but were not able to do so due to some or the other reasons. It may be for this reason 48% of the respondents have said that the changes in their lives are positive while 38% have said to suffer negative impact in their lives due to lockdown measures while remaining 14% have felt no changes at all.

Not all media professionals responded to the questionnaire send to them. Around 33% did not respond even though a polite reminder was sent to them. The reason of not responding to the questionnaire can be many but fear of losing job has been cited by some.

 Discussion:

The purpose of the study was to highlight the fact that media professionals are also under stress and are feeling changed levels of anxiety due to the measures taken by government to stop the spread of the pandemic. Various sections of the Indian society are under psychological distress even though the level of distress varies due to gender, socio-economic conditions, age, and educational levels (Rehman et al., 2020). Media professionals have not remained unaffected by the spread of Covid-19 and have faced increased levels of anxiety. The reasons of anxiety have been many, contacting disease and fear of losing job or facing financial crisis are the top three which have caused anxiety among the media professionals.The lockdown and the disease it seeks to stop have caused the fear of contacting the infection which has increased the anxiety level in many people. Another hidden reason for anxiety in media professionals during the first lockdown could be lack of physical interactions with colleagues and public which they had become accustomed to. Due to lockdown the physical interaction with the colleagues was bare minimum due to maintenance of social distancing in professional set-up and there was no interaction with public due to strict lockdown. Rehman et al. (9) have provided the lack of physical interaction among students and research scholars as one of the reasons for increased levels of stress resulting in moderate anxiety.

The fear of losing job and the resulting unemployment has been cited as one of the reasons for development of psychological stress(Blustein et al., 2020). With news (and rumours) of people losing jobs due to cost cutting exercise of companies many media professionals developed fear for their jobs even though such fears were found baseless. This fear of losing job and impending financial crisis could have caused increase in the level of anxiety among the media professionals.Even though they were just rumours the fear would have caused severe stress and would have impeded the work of the professionals till the time their fears were not removed.

Learning new skills have been found to have positive impact on the well-being of the employees which decreases the level of anxiety in them (Watson et al., 2018). It has been established that learning leads to well-being which can also lead to better performance professionally (Duckworth & Cara, 2012; Michalos, 2008).The media professionals though faced fear and anxiety utilized their time spend at home during different phases of lockdowns and unlocks to learn new skills. This according to them had positive impact on them and could be the reason due to which no one developed any psychological problems.

Conclusions:

This is probably the first study of its kind involving only the media professionals in the country. There are many limitations in the study, and it is thought that this will pave the way for further investigating into the effect lockdown and Covid-19 had on other professionals as well. It is expected that the study will help decision makers to provide better professional guidance not only in the time of pandemic but help develop ideas and tools for the future which can be useful for different professionals. Another aspect of the study during the lockdown and unlock could the number of people who devoted their time in learning or acquire new skills and how this reason not only helped them keep their mental balance but also enhanced the quality of their life. It should be taken care by the employers that rumours should not give rise to fears among the employees and any such rumour should be removed at its beginning as we have seen in the study that rumours of losing jobs was a contributing factor to the fear during the lockdown period. The increase in anxiety leads to various problems and can hinder the professional and personal life. The media houses should try and tackle this problem so that the employees are able to perform their tasks in better manner. The lack of sleep or any negative change in sleep pattern disturbs normal circadian rhythm which can have negative impact on professional performance thus again it is reiterated that employers should take this in account and provide for better counselling during the time of pandemic.

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