A HEALTH PANDEMIC CHANGING INTO A PSYCHOLOGICAL EMERGENCY

2020 came with blast and rays of hope for many. People celebrated its on coming with pomp and show ,made vows ,set goals and looked forward to roll on. But none across the world had ever thought that this new year would soon turn into a tragic story. An endemic that began in December from China soon engulfed the entire world and became a pandemic.The virus came like a natural disaster without giving any ultimatum to prepare. It not only brought a disease with it but also brought pain,anguish,fear and trauma with it. The whole world had to face lockdown to prevent the spread. But unfortunately this health emergency turned into a psychological emergency.

According to recent reports, three categories of people are worst effected :
1) the ones who have experienced the disease outbreak in their family or have lost lives

People in Italy are calling the emergency helpline numbers not to get admitted but to just exert out their mental pressure,to talk on phone or shout and take out their frustation.

2) the one who are poor or have lost their employment in the aftermath of disease

Migrants in India are filled with fear of hunger and job losses to such an extent that they are even ready to enter into a steel drum of concrete mixture for around 1380 km of journey on spooky roads between two states,only to go unidentified by the police and reach home .

Fear leads to uncertainity which ultimately results in irrational solutions like rumours of drinking alcohol in Iran or Indian remedies like drinking cow urine or President Trump 's solution of gulping or injecting disinfectant.

3)The one who experience violence or sexual abuse(both victim and the perpetrator have some psychological impacts) and the ones who ultimately commit suicide

Women and children living with domestic violence have no escape due to lockdown and its aggravating as day passes by.

Suicide rates have increased at an alarming pace which is a sign of people loosing hope on life.

What could be an effective way to control this mental hazard ?

The most apt solution could be counselling people suffering from any sort of emotional outburst. It is necessary to understand the feeling of "fear". If we try to understand it deeply we can decode it. "Fear" is a virtual feeling which our brain creates just like virtual gaming. We imagine things that are not real and might never happen in future. Still we construct it in our mind and think stronger to feel it to be true. We fear of losing jobs,failing in life and career,loosing people and often loosing ourselves. But what we don't realize is, if something is fictional ,why is there a need to be afraid off? Why one needs to take an immediate action,or haphezard life decisions or even commit suicide if future is unpredictable? 

Lets have a look at few suicide cases amidst the lockdown and their connection with fear: 

Case history	Reasons
Santosh Kaur, a 65- year-old woman, committed suicide over the fear of the COVID-19. (India)	Person was depressed, had anxiety over COVID-19 and was alone. Her fear was just an illusion and there was no one to counsel or to console her.
Finance Minister Thomas Schaefer, 54-year-old economist. (Germany)	Was not able to bear and cope with the stress about the economic fallout of COVID-19. Turned him hopeless that he could not manage citizen’s expectations for financial aid.

(source:PMC,US national library of medicines)

Our brain can store about 1 trillion bytes equaling 1 TB (Terabyte). It is just like a bermuda triangle,you can fill in it everything without spilling over. It depends how judiciously we use it.

But all these assessments are a waste until we take mental health problems as a severe issue instead of just putting zandu baam or having sleeping pills at night and ignoring them. According to WHO,one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide. Recently India passed mental healthcare act 2017 to decriminalise suicide and to recognise their rights but this will not suffice for the growing rates and need more pragmatic solution.

Human race might have seen such massive disasters before.Even Shakespeare had experienced plague which is mentioned in Romeo and Juliet as: "a plague on both of our houses". People were prevented from leaving the house even in those times. But past doesn't matters,present do. If we don't work in cohesion we might loose much more than we can ever imagine. We must understand the clear difference between physical distancing and social distancing if we wish to prevent another havoc. Don't hug or shake hands but share a smile or wave just to show that no one is alone in this. We need 'collective conscience' as proposed by Emile Durkheim to protect one another. Its time to shred our hatred,anger and ego and work for our family, neighbours,friends and even strangers to protect them from getting endangered. Its only us who can prevent a syndemic (2 or more epidemics together) at this stage. Your one polite word or counselling might save a life and do miracles.  THINK OVER IT!!