Psychological and mental health issues due to COVID-19 among Bangladeshi tertiary educational institution students

Due to the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), cases in Bangladesh have continued to increase with a total number of confirmed cases of over 1.04 million and over 16,842 deaths (as of July 14, 2021). Such a surge in COVID-19 cases has caused detrimental impacts in all areas of human lives including students of all levels. The economic and psychological costs to students in higher learning institutions in Bangladesh are believed to be very high compared to other demographic groups in the country (Islam et al., 2020) as a large proportion of expenditure (29% of total education cost) is spent on private tutoring (Toaha, 2015). All the educational institutions in Bangladesh were (physically) closed since early March 2020 and will continue to be so until August 2021 (Ela et al., 2021; Xinhua, 2021).