The Impact Of Deprivation During The Covid-19 Pandemic On Values Of Students

Abstract

The article considers social deprivation as a logical consequence of various restrictions for students, especially during lockdowns, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The social deprivation provoked by the pandemic differs in certain features. For example, during this period, online education of students was considered not as a new form of digital education, but as a challenge – stressor social deprivation during the pandemic. The subject of the study was the study of the influence of social deprivation on the value orientations of medical university students. Medical university students during the pandemic are the most vulnerable part of university students, as they experience a double load of stressors, as citizens of the country and as future medical workers, who may have to fight for the lives of their patients in extreme conditions. The research was conducted using a questionnaire using the Google platform. The study involved 301 respondents - students of a medical university. The analysis of the results confirmed that under the influence of social deprivation during the pandemic, there were significant changes in such value orientations as the value perception of freedom, prognostic values, value attitude to family, relatives, friends, value attitude to oneself. Almost half of the students have changed their ethical consciousness. The results of the study confirmed the impact of social deprivation during the COVID-19 pandemic on the value orientations of medical university students.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, social deprivation, value orientations

Introduction

The essence of social deprivation is the complete or partial isolation of an individual from society. Science knows examples of severe social deprivation, when a child is brought up outside of human society, for example, in a pack of wolves, then with such deprivation, there is a distortion in the development of the child, there is not only a delay in mental, intellectual development, and the child acquires the abilities of an animal, he forms the "Mowgli" syndrome. Moreover, this is not the smart, physically developed young man named Mowgli from the beautiful fairy tale of the great English writer and poet Kipling (2019), and this is a terrible creature with a syndrome of savagery, in which it is difficult to determine the human essence. Even the ancient Greek philosopher, the great thinker Aristotle, did not pay attention to the fact that man, first of all, is a social being (Aristotle, 2020). Only human society reproduces man. The great Russian scientist, teacher Ushinsky (2017) in his works everywhere focused on the social essence of man, in a global sense and compared the whole of humanity with a "great social organism" that has already existed for many millennia.

Modern scientists prove that with a lack of human contact, the personality develops imperfectly. Depriving a person of the possibility of interaction, that is, social deprivation leads to neuroticism and the formation of a sense of inferiority (Adler, 2021; Fromm, 2020; Horney, 2019).

In her monograph "Personality development in conditions of deprivation" Umanskaya (2013) examines the features of deprivation of children depending on the historical period, concretizes the essence of mental deprivation, defines and describes its types: sensory, motor, emotional, cognitive and social. A special role is assigned to emotional deprivation, which is most characteristic of modern parenting. Of interest are her studies in the emergence of a deprived personality, regardless of where the child is brought up.

Alekseenkova (2009) considering the main forms of social deprivation, defines its essence:

as a restriction or complete absence of contacts of a person (or any group) with society, moreover, these restrictions can differ significantly both in the degree of rigidity and in who is the initiator of isolation - the person (group) or society. (p. 14)

Purpose of the Studу

According to the factor of the initiative to implement social deprivation, that is, restrictions on contacts and interactions with society, there is voluntary isolation, when the subject himself distances himself from society; forced isolation, when society, for example, for educational purposes, isolates a convict in a correctional institution, there are closed groups that are not formally restricted in their rights to move, but on special grounds are required to stay most of the time in a special territory: children in orphanages, military and other groups of people; forced isolation, in the case when people do not voluntarily enter the isolation regime, for example, passengers of a shipwrecked steamer, stranded on a desert island and other subjects of all kinds of incidents.

Gordeevaa et al. (2020) in their article analyzed studies on the impact of restrictions and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental state of people. The article notes that most studies indicate the influence of gender on the emotional state of people. Women are less resistant to stress and have less productive coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also identify such favourable predicates for mental health as optimism and humour, which are less typical for women. Moreover, the authors considered dispositional and unrealistic optimism. If dispositional optimism protects the emotional state and is associated with adaptive coping strategies, then unrealistic optimism can have both positive and negative consequences (Gordeevaa et al., 2020).

The coronavirus pandemic has become a natural experiment in creating conditions of social deprivation, especially during lockdowns. Moreover, external restrictions are perceived by people as an authoritarian encroachment on the manifestation of personal identity. As described by Denhama and Andringab (2021), only psychological security ensures the manifestation of adequate coping and co-creation, and authoritatively imposed restriction regimes, ostensibly to overcome challenges and protect the well-being, lead to "abnormal normality".

During coronavirus restrictions, most often, the initiators of these restrictions are the governments of countries, which represents the most conflictual form of social deprivation. Taking away a life perspective, even for a limited period, creates a risk of recidivism of crimes. What is observed in the aggressive component of all manifestations related to dissatisfaction with the next lockdown or other restrictions for those not vaccinated against COVID-19? According to the theory of Jung (2019), the state of a person dissatisfied with restrictions, the settlement of fear and uncertainty in his soul, provokes a person to participate in mass processions and demonstrations, causes aggressive emotions.

During the coronavirus pandemic, society radically changed its attitude to the profession of a medical worker, whose representatives worked at the forefront of the fight against this infection. The volunteers were united by the goal of providing all possible assistance to doctors, representatives of medical personnel who worked in the "red zone", saving patients without breaks for rest and weekends. And among the volunteers who worked even in the "red zone", there were many students of medical universities. The students also experienced all the hardships of forced social deprivation: the inability to go home for the holidays, the inability to relax in the usual way – by changing the environment, the loss of the usual circle of communication, the restriction of social contacts and other external challenges associated with the specifics of conditions during the pandemic.

The pandemic of coronavirus infection generates completely new threats that can be compared with extremist ones, which, in turn, cause destructive tendencies in social mechanisms, depersonalization of social institutions (Dontsov & Perelygina, 2013), which also happens during lockdowns, personal responsibility increases in search of security concepts. In Maslow's pyramid of needs, the need for safety ranks second in importance for a person, after physiological needs (Maslow, 2014). Danger, the anxiety of the situation and socio-deprivation factors should have influenced the mechanisms of personal development of young people, especially value orientations.

Research Questions

Social deprivation during the coronavirus pandemic can affect the psychological well-being of young people. The coronavirus pandemic, accompanied by periods of the rapid increase in the number of patients and an increase in mortality, becomes the main stressor in the professional activities of medical workers and a stressor for students studying at medical universities. This is reflected in the formation of value orientations of young people. The following questions were of research interest:

• has the attitude of medical university students to such a human value as life changed;
• has the value relationship to family and friends changed;
• has the pandemic affected mental well-being, prognostic values;
• a manifestation of students' value relations to distance education.

Purpose of the Studу

The goal was set to conduct an empirical study of the impact of social deprivation during the Covid-19 pandemic on the value orientations of medical university students.

The revealed patterns will improve the quality of education and upbringing of medical university students to train qualified medical workers adapted to working conditions in difficult situations that arise during a pandemic.

Research Methods

The research was conducted among medical university students using a questionnaire using the google platform to identify changes in the value orientations of medical university students.

The research base was not chosen by chance, since it was medical workers who became the main actors in the struggle for the lives of patients during the pandemic. The intensity of the work of medical workers during the pandemic accelerates the processes of professional burnout, which causes a change in emotional and value orientations. The above processes can also influence the formation of value orientations of medical university students since it is in the process of studying at the university that students actively form an emotional and value system of a personality and a future professional.

301 students took part in the survey, including 60 boys and 241 girls, in the areas of professional training: pharmacy – 87 people, medical business – 132 people, dentistry – 54 people and medical biochemistry - 28 people. By age characteristics: 65.8% of respondents are under 19 years old, 26.6% of respondents are from 19 to 22 years old, and the rest are over 22 years old.

Findings

Usually, with forced social deprivation, the way of life changes and the activity of subjects changes. 23.2% of respondents believe that the way of life has changed dramatically and 29.9% of respondents do not have enough room for action. 26.2% of respondents feel restrictions everywhere that upset them and confirm that the way of life has changed, but not critically – 50.5% of respondents and agree with a slight change in the way of life -22.1% of respondents.

They do not feel restrictions in activity and everything suits quite a significant part of students (43.9%), and the way of life has not changed during the pandemic for only 4.2% of students. These results prove that even though more than 40% of young people did not feel any changes in their activity, but at the same time almost all young people noted that their lifestyle had changed. The digital activity of young people was able to adaptively compensate for the existing limitations of real activity.

Analyzing the answers of students to the question of whether they feel restrictions in communication, we note that 30.2% of respondents replied that they notice that the number of communications has decreased significantly, 19.3% feel restrictions in communication, but this does not bother them, 30.6% do not notice restrictions, since communication is carried out through messengers. And 19.9% of students still have everything the same.

For young people, the value of freedom is of great value; in adolescence, this value is most often maximized. Moreover, the perception of freedom among most young people is carried out in the sense not as freedom for anything, but as freedom from something. Therefore, it was important to find out during the pandemic whether the prohibitions imposed from outside restrict the freedom of young people.

It turned out that for 26.6% of young people, external restrictions were perceived by them as an encroachment on their freedom, for 61.1% of students, restrictions did not change their sense of freedom, but for 12.3% of young people, external restrictions during the pandemic served to revise their sense of freedom, it became more significant, changed qualitatively.

The uncertainty of tomorrow is one of the stressors for a person, affects his mental state, a sense of self-protection, forms coping strategies. It is important that in a situation of uncertainty there is a positive reassessment of this situation, as noted in studies, such a reassessment contributes to psychological well-being, and avoiding or accepting external challenges have a negative impact on a person's psychological well-being (Bityutskaya & Korneev, 2021).

It was studied how the uncertainty of tomorrow during the pandemic affects the mental well-being of young people. They received the following results: they answered that the uncertainty of tomorrow scares them - 27.6% of respondents; activates their violent activity - 34.9%; worsens mental well–being – 32.9%, are neutral (does not care in any way) - 4.6% of respondents. Thus, the uncertainty of tomorrow during the pandemic affects the emotional and sensory sphere of almost all students (95.4%), causes fear and anxiety in the latter, worsens mental well-being.

The pandemic has affected the change in the prognostic value orientations of the individual. Prognostic values include all kinds of programs of human activity, designing a life path, creating an image of the future and other prospects for the development of an individual.

The results of the study showed that only half of the respondents (52.8%) did not change their predictive value orientations, 35.9% of students took a wait-and-see attitude and stopped planning (predictive value orientations are a thing of the past) 11.3% of respondents.

The danger associated with the possibility of contracting coronavirus scares 11.6% of students, about 9% of students panic, 79.4% of students are realistic.

However, the pandemic allowed young people to reorient the directions of their activity, discover a new hobby (40.5% of respondents), learn to cook new dishes (36.8% of respondents), learn to draw, start learning foreign languages, play sports, read books, 10% of respondents have a new job. But in 36.5% of young people, the directions of activity have not changed.

The pandemic has changed the attitude of young people toward family, relatives, friends: these relationships have become more sensitive in 63.8% of students, relationships have become more irritable in 18.6% of respondents. The relationship remained at the same level for 17.6% of students. Thus, the results of the study prove that the majority of young people have changed the "I-concept" in their value attitude towards other people.

Under the influence of the pandemic, there have been valuing changes in the attitude of students towards themselves. 26.9% of students began to value their own lives, changed their attitude to their future, 30.6% of students realized their importance to other 20.3% of students, 31.6% of students began to take their professional training more seriously, 42.5% of students began to be more careful about their free time.

The ethical consciousness of students has changed during the pandemic. 25.6% of respondents have a qualitatively increased ethical consciousness, they are aware of the importance of the social environment. Ethical relationships have become more respectful, humane in 22.5% of students. 54.2% of students believe that their ethical views on relationships have remained the same, have not changed. And selfishness and suspicion increased in 5% of students. Thus, the importance of changing the ethical consciousness of 45.8 students is obvious.

The mental well-being of 51.8% of students did not change during the pandemic, even improved in 12.6% of students, worsened in 28.6% of students, and 7% of students feel very bad.

A lot of research has been conducted to determine the effectiveness of distance learning during lockdowns. For example, in their study on the effectiveness of the online learning process for students of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, researchers note the importance of a real communicative environment and real communication between all participants in the educational process, which is unattainable with online learning. Students are overloaded with all kinds of independent work, which is also not accompanied by teachers in real mode (Poluekhtova et al., 2020).

The influence of the comfort and non-comfort of online learning on the perception of learning values is obvious. A study was conducted on the issue of value perception of distance learning. It should be noted that distance learning during lockdowns made sense, not as a new form of digital education, but was perceived as one of the stressors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

They noted that the quality of training is decreasing -4% of respondents; allows you to study better - 1.3% of respondents; does not allow you to study better - 35.5% of respondents; online learning is tiring - 28.2% of respondents; online learning is annoying - 26.6% of respondents; online learning takes longer than real-time training -38.5% of respondents; allows you to have more free time - 5.6% of respondents; online learning does not affect my training in any way -10% of respondents.

Conclusion

Analysis of the results of this study allows us to conclude that negative judgments about online learning are 7.5 times more than positive ones. This can be explained by many reasons, but the main one is the extrapolation of the extremity of the introduction of online learning to the emotional perception of digital learning. The extreme nature of the introduction of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic did not allow the implementation of stages, adaptability, consistency, awareness and other didactic principles in the process of transition to online learning.

An unstable lifestyle during the pandemic was recorded to some extent by 95.8% of the surveyed students. In turn, a change in the way of life entails a change or, even, the destruction of the value-normative personal system of a person and affects the morale and mental state of students. 56.1% of respondents declare a restriction in activity. To some extent, they noticed that communication as a need for affiliation is not fully satisfied or they have to use messengers more intensively for this, 80.1% of young people say. The value perception of freedom has changed in 38.9% of students. Adolescence is a sensitive period of the formation of a worldview understanding of the essence of freedom and its value. Therefore, it is necessary to further study the impact of social deprivation during the pandemic on the formation of a valuable understanding of freedom among young people.

The results of the study revealed one of the main stressors during the pandemic is the uncertainty of tomorrow. 95.4% of students pointed to this stressor. However, another obvious stressor is to get infected with coronavirus during a pandemic, only 20.6% of respondents noted. Such a realistic attitude to this stressor is characteristic of medical university students. The specifics of the university are projected onto the specifics of students' perception of the stressor associated with the possibility of contracting a coronavirus infection and getting sick. Obviously, for the above reason, only 48.2% of students noted a change in their mental well-being.

A generalized analysis of the results of the study indicates that the prognostic value orientations have changed in 47.2% of students, the value attitude towards family, relatives, friends has changed in 82.4% of students. 100% of students have changed their value attitude towards themselves, and 45.8% of students noted a change in ethical self-awareness.

Thus, the results of the study of the impact of social deprivation during the coronavirus pandemic on the value orientations of medical university students made it possible to draw an unambiguous conclusion about the existence of such a direct dependence and made it possible to identify the most relevant areas for further research.

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