How bad is COVID-19 for our mental health?

(2 mins read)

There are a lot of reasons that are cause of major stress all around the world like misinformation about the virus on the internet, rise in the number of cases, changes in our lifestyle, staying home alone, social distancing and many more. If we try to list down the causes there will be huge list of the stressors because of COVID-19.

All of the us are focused on erasing the virus and we are not seeing how it’s affecting the mental health of the people. Everyone has a fear of going out in public and getting exposed to the virus. Once the virus is eradicated from the world the new problem is of the psychological issues that people are going to face. As all of the governments have ordered their people to stay at home and stay in isolation is going to affect the mental health of the people a lot. Longer periods of physical isolation, especially if experienced as involuntary, without an adequate and convincing explanation, or accompanied by financial losses can compound risks of adverse mental health consequences of physical isolation.

In the past humankind has experienced naturally occurred and human made disasters, nothing in our life time can be compared to the scope of COVID-19 crisis. The last event which can be compared to the COVID-19 is the Spanish Flu of 1918 but it was on a smaller scale. The spread of COVID-19 IS worldwide. All of the Europe, major Asian countries, USA, Canada are affected by the virus. This has a huge psychological effect on the people and studies of mental health effects of recent epidemic offer only limited guidance about the after effects of the virus.

The better comparison to the COVID-19 can be the great Depression of early 1930s. the psychological effect that it had on people resulted in increase in the rate of suicide. More and more people were getting depressed because of the crisis. Increased rates of depression, anxiety, substance use, and PTSD disorders have been found to follow the natural disasters. If in the case of COVID-19 similar patterns are followed, long after the physical threat of the virus is subsided, psychological sequelae inducing or the amplified mental disorders in the vulnerable people and the behavioral effects within the general population is going to be a big challenge to face.

People who already has a history of these disorders may get worse. So we should look out for the people who are already struggling with these problems and there must be a safe space where people can talk about the problems they are facing and relate to them so they know that they are not alone in it all of us are together and supporting each other.