Coronavirus: Mental Health Issues Rise Because of the Pandemic
With the coronavirus pandemic gripping the world into a terrifying situation, many repercussions are being felt every day. Many thousands of people have lost their lives, with many others suffering and recovering from it with some long-term implications on physical health.
The loss of the dearest, the loss of freedom, and the loss of income have also impacted the mental health conditions of the worldwide population. Although it’s early days, many research-found data are coming out with some intrinsic proof to this claim.
Let’s find out the extent of the derogatory impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on our mental health from below.
A Rise in Depression and Anxiety Prevalence
A study to find the impact of Covid-19 on people’s mental health has found some concerning information. It shows that the prevalence of psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety has risen pretty sharply all around the world - by some 24 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
Diving further into the results, data indicates the rise in mental health issues was more common in Europe than in Asia, with the continents showcasing a rise of 26 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. Asia scored the same percentage in anxiety disorders too. As for the rest of the world, the rise in depression was found to be around 39 per cent.
The above-mentioned research was published in the Psychological Medicine journal, where the researchers claimed to have assessed 226,638 people.
Impact of Pandemic Mitigation Strategies
With such a stiff rise in mental health disorders, it’s important to find out whether the deteriorating mental conditions have been caused by the coronavirus pandemic mitigation strategies.
Analysing the impacts of factors such as cancellation of public events, restrictions on gatherings, workplace closures, temporary closures of public transports, and so on; researchers could only find evidence for public transport closures to cause an increase in anxiety prevalence. It was more severe in Europe than in any other part of the world.