Prolonged Lockdown due to COVID-19 Alters Sleep-Wake Timings and Negatively Affects Self-esteem, Personality, Depression and Anxiety in College-Going Indian Students.

Purpose: COVID-19 forced the shutdown of colleges and socialization around the world including India and prolonged lockdown could have a significant impact on sleep, mood, emotion and anxiety in students. Here, we designed a survey to assess the effect of lockdown on sleep-wake, self-esteem, depression and anxiety via the survey on 321 Indian college-going students.

Methods: We assessed the effect of lockdown on sleep-wake (wake up, get up, bed and sleep timing, total time in bed and sleep duration) and self-esteem and depression on students via various questions.

Results: We found that students delayed sleep timing by 1 h in lockdown than pre-lockdown days. Specifically, urban male populations were late sleeper than any other group. However, total sleep duration did not differ between groups. In self-esteem questions, most students agreed that they were of no good, felt nervous, displeased, and frustrated about performance in lockdown. Depression and anxiety questionnaire gave more significant results related to mood and mental health. More than 50% of students agreed that they faced a lack of concentration, had been feeling irritated and angry, felt fatigued and tired, and everything had been a failure during lockdown days.

Conclusion: Overall, the survey suggests that lack of social life and prolonged lockdown affect the sleep-wake cycle, self-esteem, anxiety and depression of Indian students.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41782-022-00200-9.