Xiaoyun Liu

Assignment 1

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The Issue I care about is the mental heath when people are quarantine at home.

 

Background

Recently, the whole world is in a severe situation, full of tension, because of a sudden disease. In this disaster, everyone's life has been affected because they have to give up a lot of things they should have done because of their health. In this extreme environment, everyone has a different mentality. In this period of time, people can only stay at home most of the time, keep enough distance between people, and all work, learning and communication are carried out remotely. In fact, this is a good test of the usefulness of technology, so that people can communicate effectively even at a very far distance. However, although we still keep in touch with the outside world, most of our living environment is indoors. The daily activity range is bed, bathroom, kitchen, dining table. The distance is very limited, which inevitably leads to visual fatigue, and even some people feel like they are in prison. Such a long-term development will have a great impact on people's physical and mental development. Some people will start to yearn for the outside life, wonder what others do at home, or want to change a visual experience. With a long time facing to the same environment and lots of concern about the outside world, it might affect people’s mental health. 

 

Issue：

People cannot go out, feel tried with the same environment, lack of new ideas to develop their life style. It will lead to negative attitude. How to use technology to make people have better feeling after a big change of their life?

 

Why it is important:

The quarantine is an action that everyone have to do due to the COVID-19. The whole world have been change by that and it will affect the world system for a while after the disease is been control. People are living in concern and doubt with addition of facing the same environment, objects, and living in a limit environment without less opportunity to get any close connection with actual human beings. 

 

“Part of the reason for this is the impact that quarantine has on three key elements of mental health: autonomy, competency, and connectedness.”

 

Galderisi S, Heinz A, Kastrup M, Beezhold J, Sartorius N. Toward a new definition of mental health. World Psychiatry. 2015;14(2):231–233. doi:10.1002/wps.20231

 

The review found that psychological distress is common both during and after periods of quarantine. People commonly experienced:

 

•     Fear

•     Sadness

•     Numbness

•     Insomnia

•     Confusion

•     Anger

•     Post-traumatic stress symptoms

•     Depressive symptoms

•     Low mood 

•     Stress

•     Emotional disturbance

•     Irritability

•     Emotional exhaustion 

https://www.verywellmind.com/protect-your-mental-health-during-quarantine-4799766

 

 

Why Do I Care?

I am part of people who quarantine at home, and have stay home for a month. Before this happened, I really like to stay home especially when everything can be deliver to home and I do not need to think about what should I wear and do make up before I go out. However, now everyone have to stay home and no one knows when we can go back to our normal life, I start feeling concern. Especially when I need to continue study at home, I feel struggle with my assignment, worry about my internship application, and it make me feel stressful. I live in a small apartment and share space with a roommate. The space I active is very limit, what I can see everyday just outside the window, cell phone, laptop, iPad, and the empty wall. I could only interact with some machine that could have simple reaction that I knew. Like I know the lamp will turn on when I touch the switch. When I repeating doing something for a long time, I feel I am limit to imaging and think about good ideas for my design, and I feel upset. When I talked to my friend, they said they have the same problem, and they are very concern that their mentally health will affect by this sudden change and may not continue their normal life. Therefore, I wonder how many people having the same problem as me and what they would like to change in current situation. 

 

 

Opportunities:

1. There is an opportunity for people to make them feel they are not at home.

2. There is an opportunity for people to communicate with others and get some inspiration of what they do at home.

3. There is an opportunity for people to them have positive attitude of life in a hard situation. 

 

Research questions:

1. What do you do at home during this time?

2. How do you feel about it?

3. What do you want to improve the life you have right now?

4.   What do they need at home to make people who have concern to feel better and make people who has positive attitude to have a chance to make other people have a same feeling.