Impact of COVID-19 on People's Mental Health

ASSESSMENT (INDIVIDUAL): A SHORT ESSAY

TOPIC: Impact of COVID had on people’s mental health

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Introduction

This essay is based on providing an overview of the chosen topic “impact of covid-19 on people's mental health”. Regarding this topic, the essay will prepare the question or statement of understanding the impact of covid-19 on the mental health of people along with providing some suggestions for overcoming their impact. To describe this topic, some theories will be adopted to provide relevance to this topic such as cognitive theory and psychosocial theories. The main causes of covid-19 on people's health are related to high-level anxiety, stigma, isolation, and panic level.

Essay

As the covid-19 pandemic rapidly sweeps around the world inducing a considerable degree of worry, fear, and population concern wider among certain individual groups particularly among care providers, adults, old people, and people with underlying health issues. In the terms of public mental health, the impact of psychological to date has elevated the rates of anxiety and stress. Widnall, Winstone, Mars, Haworth, and Kidger (2020), argues that with the new introduction of impacts especially quarantine and its impact on people's routines, activities, and livelihood – levels of depression, use of drugs & harmful alcohol. loneliness and suicidal behavior or self-harm are expected to increase. Hence, various psychological issues like depression, panic disorder, adjustment disorder, and anxiety, coronavirus have caused many threats to the physical health and lives of people worldwide. In the opinion of Fiorillo and Gorwood (2020), although isolation also helps in reducing coronavirus infections, reduced friends & family access and other support systems including mental issues like suicide, anxiety, substance withdrawal, and depression. Moreover, some covid-19 effects are related to physical symptoms like fever, cough, sore throat, anxiety, denial, stigma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anger outbursts and psychological symptoms like family caregivers, patients, and health care providers. Psychosocial theories also can be suitable in this situation because it includes four practices of stress & coping, self-efficacy, social support, and learned helplessness. Such theories can help the individual to identify and deal with many causes of coronavirus on people's mental health in terms of isolation, anxiety & frightening provoking experience, behavioral & emotional manifestations, feelings of loneliness, rapid mood swings, and others (Panchal et al, 2020).

Attending to the psychosocial well-being and mental health while patients care is necessary for managing the physical health of people. Within this pandemic issue, the people need to refer the resources in caring for the caregivers during the pandemic situation including getting the finding respite time and enough rest during the shifts, engaging in physical activity, eating meals (healthy food on schedule), and staying in the contact with maintaining social distancing with friends and family. By using the cognitive theory, people can focus on monitoring self-behavior in order to identify the symptoms of stress and depression. This theory is known as the psychological approach that attempts to explain the behavior of humans by understanding their thoughts processes. Shojaei and Masoumi, (2020), agrees with this point of view which means to overcome the impact of covid-19 on mental health, people should focus on monitoring the symptoms of stress/depression disorder, instructive memories, hopelessness feelings, prolonged sadness, and others and then communicate about such issues with their trusted colleagues, friends, and family to deal with them. Moreover, from this point of view, Smith and Lim (2020), argues that covid-19 also has given an impact on workplace employees where it becomes necessary for the company supervisors or managers that they must adjust the staffing schedules and procedures, offer access to psychosocial support, review & monitor the wellbeing of the staff, create the open communication environment, etc. to protect the staff from the poor mental health and chronic stress.

Conclusion

The essay found that covid-19 has a huge impact on people's mental health in terms of depression, isolation, personality, rude behavior, suicide, and many more. Further, the report also argued that covid-19 has an impact on people's personal and professional lives. So, according to this report, the impact of this pandemic situation can be overcome by following some strategies such as monitoring self-activities, doing exercise regularly, doing meditation, etc. for the workplace perspective, this is necessary that organization must develop the proper working environment for employees, set their work schedules, develop open communication environment and others.

References

Fiorillo, A. and Gorwood, P., 2020. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and implications for clinical practice. European Psychiatry, 63(1). https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/E2826D643255F9D51896673F205ABF28/S0924933820000358a.pdf/div-class-title-the-consequences-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-mental-health-and-implications-for-clinical-practice-div.pdf

Panchal, N., Kamal, R., Orgera, K., Cox, C., Garfield, R., Hamel, L. and Chidambaram, P., 2020. The implications of COVID-19 for mental health and substance use. Kaiser family foundation, 21. https://pameladwilson.com/wp-content/uploads/4_5-2021-The-Implications-of-COVID-19-for-Mental-Health-and-Substance-Use-_-KFF-1.pdf

Shojaei, S.F. and Masoumi, R., 2020. The importance of mental health training for psychologists in COVID-19 outbreak. Middle East Journal of Rehabilitation and Health Studies, 7(2), p.e102846. http://pu.edu.pk/MHH-COVID-19/Articles/Article45.pdf

Smith, B.J. and Lim, M.H., 2020. How the COVID-19 pandemic is focusing attention on loneliness and social isolation. Public Health Res Pract, 30(2), p.3022008. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d4b8/7055101c6b3988c43eb3a53f59b8be68e986.pdf

Widnall, E., Winstone, L., Mars, B., Haworth, C.M. and Kidger, J., 2020. Young people’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. University of Bristol: Bristol, UK. https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-People%E2%80%99s-Mental-Health-during-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-Research-Briefing.pdf