Global infection of SARS CoV-2 caused a disease called Corona-virus Disease 2019(CoVID-19) with a Chinese city, Wuhan as its epicenter. To attenuate the effect of SARS CoV-2 infection, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued guidelines according to which all the non-essential movements were to be halted. These guidelines were followed globally and a nation-wide lockdown of a few months was imposed by governments of several countries. This long term isolation and sudden increase of patients with an incurable disease along with other factors caused distress within the health care personal and the general population. This distress progressively emerged many psychological problems including stress, anxiety, frustration, depression, and uncertainty. The most common among them is fear and pervasive anxiety, which are generally linked to a pandemic and escalated with the rise in new cases and inadequate information provided by media.
Psychological reactions that are most common during SARS CoV-2 infection include:
Uncontrolled fears related to infection: During the time of any disease outbreak every individual has a general fear of getting the infection and this increases when there is no specific drug present for the cure. This fear reaches its peak when you have limited social contact and you become precautious at extreme levels.
Pervasive Anxiety: Anxiety is generally a normal emotion when you deal with any kind of stress but at times like these when you have restricted social contact, confined to an area, and constant fear of an unknown infective agent spread increases the intensity of this anxiety. This can start from insomnia to loneliness and result in depression and post-traumatic stress.
Boredom: Abnormally restricted social contact, confinement, and loss of daily routine resulted in boredom. This results in an unusual thinking pattern or perspective which may end with frustration and pervasive loneliness.
Loneliness: The final and biggest effect of this situation is the feeling of loneliness. Loneliness is the result of limited social contact, loss of daily habits, and the absence of a specific routine leading to unusual thinking patterns. During the infection of SARS CoV-2 leading to nation-wide lockdown in many countries loneliness can be significantly associated with depression and suicidal thoughts.
Fig: Effect of different psychological reactions along with the effect of risk and protective factors.
Overall the infection of SARS CoV-2 resulting in quarantine and limited social contact can have a detrimental effect on the mental health of the general population. To reduce or attenuate the effect we can have some preventive strategies like effective communication, perceiving legit information, communicating to a person with a better understanding in the field to grasp some genuine knowledge of the situation and understanding in better and many others like these.
In case of developing any of the psychological reactions seek the scientific information provided regarding tackling the situation.
Reference:
G. Serafini, B. Parmigiani, A. Amerio, A. Aguglia, L. Sher and M. Amore. The psychological impact of COVID-19 on the mental health in the general population. DOI: 10.1093/qjmed/hcaa201