Abstract

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND MENTAL HEALTH CONSEQUENCES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Sunitha Mahadevan*, Dhanya Dharman and Shaiju S. Dharan

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic is a major health crisis affecting several nations, with over 15,380,140 cases and 630,343 confirmed deaths reported to date. At present, the focus of States and the World bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) is on controlling and mitigating the impact of this pandemic by identifying, testing, treating infected people, developing drugs, vaccines and treatment protocols. Such widespread outbreaks are associated with adverse mental health consequence.[1,2] Keeping this in mind, existing literature on the COVID-19 outbreak pertinent to mental health was retrieved via a literature search on google, and published articles were classified according to their overall themes and summarised. A total of 27 studies were included. Out of these, only 13 studies evaluated indirect and indirect effect of the pandemic on health care workers and on the general public. reported worsening of psychiatric symptoms. Based on systematic search conducted in various database such as Pubmed, Google Scholar databases until July 2020, on studies measuring psychiatric symptoms co-morbidities associated with COVID-19 among general population revealed lower psychological well-being and higher scores of anxiety, depression, stress and other psychological distress compared to before COVID-19, while no difference when comparing these symptoms in the initial phase of the outbreak.[3,4] Studies investigating health care workers found increased depression/depressive symptoms, anxiety, psychological distress and poor sleep quality. Fear seems more certainly a consequence of mass quarantine and thus, it is essential to preserve the mental health of individuals and to develop psychological interventions, mental health education that can improve the mental health of vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 pandemic.[5]

Keywords: COVID 19, Mental health consequences, Awareness, Quarantine.