THE IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE SOCIO-EMOTIONAL HEALTH OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS IN THE RURAL AREA OF GLÓRIA DO GOITÁ
COVID-19; Social-Emotional Health; Children; Adolescents; Rural Area.
This research highlights rural children and adolescents, specifically school-age children of farming families living in the rural area of Glória do Goitá. It seeks to analyze the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the socio-emotional health of these children and adolescents. It seeks to identify the memories and right to the past of these rural children and adolescents during the coronavirus outbreak (Miranda, 2018). It understands that rural children and adolescents differ from urban children and adolescents in several aspects, such as traditions, ancestry, leisure activities, play, contact with the land, intra-family relationships, and lifestyles, among other factors. It is important to emphasize that rural children and adolescents themselves have specific characteristics, such as those of quilombola and indigenous children and adolescents (Moura, 2018). Therefore, transdisciplinarity is the approach that most strongly underpins our research, as it allows us to understand rural children and adolescents from a perspective that broadens and enhances relationships, interrelationships, interpenetrations, transversalities, transversalizations, connections, reconnections, interactions, dialogicities, contextualizations, feedbacks, and recursions (Nicolescu (2002). The general objective of this work, based on a transdisciplinary approach, is to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the socioemotional health of children and adolescents in the rural area of Glória do Goitá. In terms of methodology, qualitative research was used with children and adolescents from the rural area of Glória do Goitá, aged 10 to 14, belonging to the Esperançar Musical Group. Data production resulted from participant observation in dialogue circles, the application of questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using Eco's (1991) interpretative technique. and Barthes (1988).In terms of results, we highlight that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the socio-emotional health of children and adolescents in rural Glória do Goitá across multiple dimensions, developing and/or triggering various types of suffering and pain, especially the deprivation of leisure time and cycling, a symbol of child and youth empowerment. The home, family, school, and community were mutually influenced by the pandemic, thus causing possible psychological and emotional illness (Ferreira, 2022).