As it was expected, a natural consequence of this trial that humanity has to endure due to the pandemic of the coronavirus is that our mental health is greatly affected.
The social effects of social distancing, confinement, lack of face to face communications, financial difficulties, loss of jobs or working from home, systematic fear of being infected and the constant threatening of human lives, has accumulated to an increase of the levels of anxiety and depression among the general public.
Furthermore, we can only imagine how people’s mental health was affected after being hospitalized. Patients of the disease had to stay away from their loved ones’ support or presence whilst staying within clinics or hospitals and in some cases being attached to breathing supports.
This can be very challenging.
The psychiatric community currently focuses on assisting coronavirus patients in order to learn what the mental consequences of their experience are, in order to formulate different intervention and therapeutic measures.
In our community, no scientific study thus far has shed any light on the social, emotional and public health consequences coronavirus patients suffered from after being infected or hospitalized.
Our daily research though indicates that the general percentages scores for anxiety and depression increased drastically regarding these patients. Especially, some of these symptoms become more noticeable after the acute phase of the disease. Mirroring this, post-traumatic stress affects an individual in a similar manner; symptoms usually increase with the passage of time.
Special attention is required in cases where the mental effect of the disease is being embodied from a patient, meaning that general symptoms such cough, sleep disturbances, body pain, increased heart rate and mood irregularities are still being experienced by underlying stress and anxiety which may result in patients visiting different doctors and specialists before they end up to a psychiatrist to receive diagnosis and therapy.
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) have shown how viral diseases can be associated with long term mental health concerns and psychological discomfort with patients, affecting them even for at least one year after being infected. Similarly, this also seems to be the case for COVID-19 patients.
For this reason is of great importance to offer psychiatric and neurological support to infected patients in order to prepare preventative measures.