Mental Health Issues in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Evolving a Strategy

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a global health emergency in a short span of time. Novel kind of the disease, highly infectious nature, rapid progress with serious medical complications and risk of death, and absence of effective treatment and vaccine have all added to a community fear. Need for social distancing, social isolation, and quarantine in contacts further contributes to the fear and also creates a stigma. Declaration of lockdown in many parts of the world to prevent spread of illness has been associated with socioeconomic consequences with great loss to the world economy as well unemployment in a large section of the population. All these factors impose a high risk of mental health problems like anxiety, fear, worries, sleep disturbances, depression, etc. in the general population, and also worsening of the existing symptoms in persons with existing mental illness. The impact of the pandemic on mental health is likely to be long lasting, and a great challenge to the mental health professionals and the policy makers. This paper discusses various strategies to effectively manage the mental health issues in the light of limited availability of mental health resources and restricted access to health services due to lockdown in low-resource settings.

Keywords

• covid-19
• mental health
• management
• lockdown