This Research Topic is part of our Regional Perspectives series. Other regionally focused collections in this series: Assessing and Evaluating the Impact of The Covid-19 Pandemic on Anxiety and Stress: Perspectives from Eastern Europe and Central Asia Assessing and Evaluating the Impact of The Covid-19 Pandemic on Anxiety and Stress: Perspectives from North America Assessing and Evaluating the Impact of The Covid-19 Pandemic on Anxiety and Stress: Perspectives from South America Assessing and Evaluating the Impact of The Covid-19 Pandemic on Anxiety and Stress: Perspectives from the Indian Sub-Continent The Covid-19 pandemic has unduly affected the mental health care system and mental health well-being of people globally due to a plethora of potential impacts on our own health, health care systems, and the economy amongst others. While waves of Covid-19 fluctuate globally, challenges to providing appropriate mental health care services and developing effective solutions in terms of prevention and treatment for anxiety and stress-related disorders remain major concerns. As the pandemic initially spread from East Asia, countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea were the first countries to be impacted by COVID-19, leading to certain levels of economic recessions and posing threats to society. In China, 53.8% of the respondents reported a moderate or severe psychological impact of the pandemic (Wang et al, 2020). In Japan, 11.5% of adult respondents experienced serious psychological distress and the prevalence of depression was 17.9% (Yamamoto, 2020). In South Korea, 45% of the 400 residents expressed clinical levels of depression, anxiety, or stress (Lee, 2021). Hence, more efforts and concerns should be generated to support public mental health. As a regional historical unit, East Asian countries and regions share similar cultures and to varying degrees influenced by Confucianism. Therefore, both adults and children tend to hold high levels of academic and career expectations, resulting in overwhelming academic and job stress. Considering the segregation policy, students and employees had to be separated from schools and workplaces. While there are several side effects of online study and work, which would be detrimental to individuals residing in East Asia.

The physical effects of COVID-19 are felt globally. However, one issue that has not been sufficiently addressed is the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, citizens worldwide are enduring widespread lockdowns; children are out of school; and millions have lost their jobs, which has caused anxiety, depression, insomnia, and distress. Mental Health Effects of COVID-19 provides a comprehensive analysis of mental health problems resulting from COVID-19, including depression, suicidal thoughts and attempts, trauma, and PTSD. The book includes chapters detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the family's well-being and society dynamics. The book concludes with an explanation on how meditation and online treatment methods can be used to combat the effects on mental health. - Discusses family dynamics, domestic violence, and aggression due to COVID-19 - Details the psychological impact of COVID-19 on children and adolescents - Includes key information on depression, anxiety, and suicide as a result of COVID-19

In this edited volume, experts on conflict resolution examine the impact of the crises triggered by the coronavirus and official responses to it. The pandemic has clearly exacerbated existing social and political conflicts, but, as the book argues, its longer-term effects open the door to both further conflict escalation and dramatic new opportunities for building peace. In a series of short essays combining social analysis with informed speculation, the contributors examine the impact of the coronavirus crisis on a wide variety of issues, including nationality, social class, race, gender, ethnicity, and religion. They conclude that the period of the pandemic may well constitute a historic turning point, since the overall impact of the crisis is to destabilize existing social and political systems. Not only does this systemic shakeup produce the possibility of more intense and violent conflicts, but also presents new opportunities for advancing the related causes of social justice and civic peace. This book will be of great interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, public policy and International Relations.

"The global disruption to education caused by the COVD-19 pandemic is without parallel and the effects on learning are severe. The crisis brought education systems across the world to a halt, with school closures affecting more than 1.6 billion learners. While nearly every country in the world offered remote learning opportunities for students, the quality and reach of such initiatives varied greatly and were at best partial substitutes for in-person learning. Now, 21 months later, schools remain closed for millions of children and youth, and millions more are at risk of never returning to education. Evidence of the detrimental impacts of school closures on children's learning offer a harrowing reality: learning losses are substantial, with the most marginalized children and youth often disproportionately affected. Countries have an opportunity to accelerate learning recovery and make schools more efficient, equitable, and resilient by building on investments made and lessons learned during the crisis. Now is the time to shift from crisis to recovery - and beyond recovery, to resilient and transformative education systems that truly deliver learning and well-being for all children and youth."--The World Bank website.

In recent years, interest in non-Western curative techniques among Americans has grown by leaps and bounds. Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work is the first book to strongly connect Western therapeutic techniques with Eastern philosophy and practices, while also providing a comprehensive and pragmatic agenda for social work, and mental health professionals. This breakthrough text, written by a cast of highly regarded researchers from both Asia and America, presents a holistic, therapeutic approach that ties Eastern philosophy and practical techniques to Western forms of therapy in order to help bring about positive, transformative changes in individuals and families.Integrative therapy focuses on the mind-body-spirit relationship, recognizes spirituality as a fundamental domain of human existence, acknowledges and utilizes the mind's power as well as the body's, and reaches beyond self-actualization or symptom reduction to broaden a perception of self that connects individuals to a larger sense of themselves and to their communities. Here, the authors provide a pragmatic, step-by-step description of assessment and treatment techniques that employ an integrative, holistic perspective. They begin by establishing the conceptual framework of integrative body-mind-spirit social work, then expertly describe, step-by-step, assessment and treatment techniques that utilize integrative and holistic perspectives. Several case studies demonstrate the approach in action, such as one with breast cancer patients who participated in body-mind-spirit and social support groups and another in which trauma survivors used meditation to get onto a path of healing. These examples provide solid empirical evidence that integrative body-mind-spirit social work is indeed a practical therapeutic approach in bringing about tangible changes in clients. The authors also discuss ethical issues and give tips for learning integrative body-mind-spirit social work.Professionals in social work, psychology, counseling, and nursing, as well as graduate students in courses on integral, alternative, or complementary clinical practice will find this a much-needed resource that complements the growing interest in alternatives to traditional Western psychotherapy.

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.