Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health: An Overview

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) pandemic is a major threat to public health worldwide; it has been identified as originating in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. It has spread across the globe, causing an outbreak of acute infectious pneumonia. Such a global outbreak is associated with adverse effects on mental health. Fear, stress and anxiety seem more definitely an outcome of mass quarantine.

Methods: Keeping this pandemic situation in mind, existing literature on the COVID-19 crisis relevant to mental health was redeemed via a literature search from the PubMed database. Collected published articles were summarized according to their overall themes.

Results: Preliminary evidence suggests that symptoms of self-reported stress, anxiety and depression have a common psychological impact due to the pandemic, and may be associated with disrupted sleep. Regional, state and National-international borders have almost been shut down, economies crashed, and billions of people quarantined or isolated at their own homes and quarantine centers. In this situational frame of covid-19, patients, frontline health-care professionals anf geriatric population with existing psychiatric conditions may be encountering further suffering.

Conclusion: COVID-19 will continue to affect mental health, which plays an important role in battling the epidemic. With the scare of the COVID-19 pandemic on the rise, it is time that psychiatrists should try to integrate the health-care services keeping mental health at prime.

Keywords: COVID-19; Communicable disease; epidemics; health-care professionals.; mental health; psychological factors.