Emotional Shifts and Recovery in the Post-COVID-19 Era: A Retrospective Survey Among Adolescents in Vietnam

Lam Thi Le (), Johnston H. C. Wong () and Mai-Huong Thi Phan
Additional contact information
Lam Thi Le: Faculty of Psychology, Education, and Social Work, University of Science and Education, The University of Danang, 459 Ton Duc Thang Street, Lien Chieu District, Danang 550000, Vietnam
Johnston H. C. Wong: Faculty of Psychology, Education, and Social Work, University of Science and Education, The University of Danang, 459 Ton Duc Thang Street, Lien Chieu District, Danang 550000, Vietnam
Mai-Huong Thi Phan: Faculty of Psychology, Education, and Social Work, University of Science and Education, The University of Danang, 459 Ton Duc Thang Street, Lien Chieu District, Danang 550000, Vietnam

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: Recognizing widespread emotional and mental health issues among students during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to investigate whether recovery and resilience have emerged in the post-pandemic era. A retrospective survey was conducted with high school students in Da Nang, a Vietnamese tourist city that endured multiple waves of COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022. The survey was conducted 18 months after Da Nang was locked down and had only recently entered the ‘new normal’ phase in early 2023. Results revealed that even though the pandemic had subsided, negative emotional experiences remained vivid in students’ memories, even when the pandemic was internationally declared to have ended. Fears of illness, death, isolation, losing social connections, and disruptions in academic paths still lingered. Nevertheless, a significant rebound from predominantly negative to positive emotions was observed among the young people. Understanding which negative emotions affected students the most will allow us to devise more targeted policies and provide more effective social services in response to similar public health crises in the future.

Keywords: emotional well-being; adolescent mental health; COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/4/227/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/4/227/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:4:p:227-:d:1628439

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().