Aarat Sinha is a 7th grader attending school in India. Over COVID-19, he created several artwork to show his appreciation for our planet.

My name is Sarah from Iraq, my hobby is drawing. After the home quarantine, I practiced my ideas in drawing and started to develop more in it, but the Covid 19 epidemic affected me and my daily routine, as I woke up every morning and went to my school where I learn more science and school knowledge and deal with my teachers and colleagues with sincere knowledge.  I was organizing my daily activities carefully, attending my lessons and dealing with Facebook in school, and I slept regularly and woke up regularly until my food I used to eat regularly, but this situation changed the scales of my life, so my appointments differed in all aspects of my life as I woke up late.  I only eat one meal a day, and this technique affected me terribly.  Where I used to go on the bus with my classmates and I was a little happy going and I felt that I was interacting in my school life.  But it is okay to share my ideas and drawings with my family and spend time on that.

I also suffered and experienced psychological anxiety, depression, and mental disorders, which affected my physical condition, so that I became sick and became ill with intestinal disorders and mental illnesses, as I went to an internist and treated myself and my father instructed me to do some sports exercises to strengthen my body and strengthen the respiratory system.  My father also instructed me to replace positive cases with negative cases, for example from sleep and depression, I replace this with sports and getting up early.  As well as reading books and browsing through social networking and other things.  I eat important foods that give the body immunity from diseases and replace disease - strength and toughness - and continue with my daily life normally and go out to some gardens in order to relieve myself from my psychological and physical affairs.

 Despite this!  I overcame depression and practiced my work and my hobbies, such as drawing, writing, etc., because I thought that Covid 19 was prolonged, and I do not mind continuing with daily life as much as possible.  I surfed on Facebook and other websites and contacted my colleagues in order to gain some important information for me and develop my knowledge abilities.

 I dealt with isolation and emptiness by filling this void with what increases my strength, so I practiced sports, jogging and some sports exercises at least an hour a day, this makes me able to resist diseases.  I also heard some of my favorite songs and music, watched some social series, and watched some beautiful, simple cartoon films.  Life is beautiful, and we must make it continue with bonding and social cohesion, and we always inform people of good and happiness, and the day of relief and joy must come.

My name is Sozyar Ahmed, I am from Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. Painting and drawing have always been my hobby and talent that I am developing every day to become better and better at them. This pandemic hasn’t effected my family in a major way but it gave me a lot of time to spend with them and communicate with them more. But for me it actually effected my mental health, because usually I kept myself busy with university’s work and studies, but now that I have to be home and I have nothing to distract me, my mental issues are starting to come out again specially my anxiety.
On the first months my anxiety was at its peak when I couldn’t even think straight and most of the times I couldn’t eat nor sleep peacefully but painting kept me calm and saint, the moment I put my brush on the canvas my mind goes off of my anxiety thoughts, so it gives my brain a break from all of my thoughts and prevents my body from having anxiety attacks. And you can see that in the sketches I have done (you can see them on my Instagram) they are mostly my anxiety thoughts that I transformed into drawings.
I guess I can say the way the virus affected my work was in a positive way, because I have to stay home more often and that way I have more time to paint and practice new tricks or styles of painting, so this way I don’t feel lonely so often, although I was never a social person myself, but the more I paint the more I can cope with the isolation, it’s like the canvas becomes someone I can speak to with my brush, and that way I feel less lonely.

How has Covid 19 had an impact on your work?
When the Pandemic started, I started a collaboration with a group of people related to the healthcare field that started a Blog (Coronavirus en Positivo) in an online newspaper (Público). The project, under the name of ESCUCHADORAS DE  VOCES (voice listeners), was initially going to focus exclusively on mental health, but with the pandemic,  it transformed into a wider project that talked about health recommendations and topics related to COVID 19.
I made a drawing every day for 100 days, to illustrate the texts to be published on the blog. That greatly affected my work, since I had to work at a faster pace and interpret other people´s ideas instead of just my own. It was very challenging but it kept my mind active during the quarantine. Some of these illustrations, like those that I submitted for this project, were very autobiographic. They helped me channel my feelings and uncertainties, and also sometimes they soothed me when I felt lonesome or when I was experiencing some Kind of anxiety.
The first one, “Self Reflection” was done during the first weeks of the pandemic and accompanied a post that talked about the behavior of the people in mental health programs during the lockdown. This drawing is an introspective self-portrait that tried to offer hope and a positive view of the future when everything seemed dark like the coffee in the cup.

How are u coping with the lockdown and social isolation?
The second work that I submit it is titled “Distress”, it accompanied a text that talked about the distress data during the lockdown. It was done during the de-escalation process. I used that text as an inspiration, but the image is again a self-portrait or how I felt at the moment. I identified with those who suffered distress. After the lockdown, people in my country were allowed to start going out for walks and even meet other people keeping the proper measures, but I still had trouble leaving my house. I was scared, for a while, I think I had what it is called “The cabin syndrome”. I saw the world as an uncertain, dangerous, and hostile environment, and it took me some time to willingly leave my house to socialize or walk.
I know that, right now, a lot of people around the world are dealing with mental health problems. As an example, new data about mental health and suicide ideation during the month of June in the USA has recently been published, showing that it has significantly increased.
To all of you that are struggling, I want to tell you: You are not alone.  Let´s talk about mental health, let´s also talk about suicide in a respectful and appropriate manner,  WHO recommended communication as a prevention strategy. Let´s all work together to destroy the taboos and stigma that surround these matters.


How this pandemic affected you your family and your daily routine?
I lived through confinement on my own. Some of my close relatives lived nearby and the rest of my close family was confined further away. Sometimes it was hard not to be able to see them knowing that some of them were nearby. We stayed connected through video and phone calls. The situation even brought me closer to my cousins with whom I video chatted every day. The harder part for me was not being able to touch anybody for almost three months, and even when the confinement was eased in Spain, I still did not go near anyone, following the Health Ministry recommendations.