Hand down, Covid19 is the worst and most calamitic occurrence that our generation has ever experienced. Truly a Black Swan event. The number of lives that it has taken away from us, the amount of people that it is still snatching away, the untold misery it has brought upon large swathes of populations all over the Globe is beyond measure.
But what may have gone relatively unnoticed is the adverse impact Covid 19 has had on the mental health of those unlucky enough to have experienced it closely. The person who is affected with the virus is in equal mental turmoil as their kin, who are desperately waiting for him or her to recuperate safely.
In an attempt to uncover this particular aspect – the mental toll which the coronavirus has extracted from its victims- Indian Masterminds interacted with Dr. Neeraj, a psychiatrist from Lucknow who was also struck by this virus, and Dr. Dharmendra Singh, psychology consultant at Batra Hospital & Medical Research Centre in New Delhi.
‘PATIENTS TEND TO GIVE UP ON LIFE DUE TO DEPRESSION’
Dr. Neeraj, who himself had become a serious Covid19 patient experienced the virus from both sides of the bed – as a doctor and a patient. He realized that the society has started considering coronavirus a taboo.
“If a family is affected from Covid, people start treating them like their enemies. Nobody wants to associate with them and even talk to the distressed family. This is because of incomplete awareness among people who weren’t conscious about how to treat or deal with a person who is affected, but instead were advised to ‘run away’ from them and keep their distance,” the psychiatrist told Indian Masterminds.
His entire family went down with Covid at the same time and even after being a health worker himself, he had to stand in lines for hours and visit each and every hospital to get just one bed.
“Such is the scenario of the country due to which anybody would feel depressed. Even if you get the bed, seeing people die all around you makes you traumatized. I know of a case when a patient died in the ward and his body lay there on the bed for the entire night! Can you imagine the condition of the person lying just next to his bed? Such things give you suicidal tendencies and it becomes extremely difficult to deal with them,” said Dr Neeraj.
Furthermore, he believes not being able to see your family and staying isolated between strangers and death all around, makes one vulnerable. “When the person gives up on life and hope from within, no doctor or medicine can save them. A crumpled mental health does that to people. They give up on life and untimely lose it. When there is no will left to live, how would you uplift your spirits?”points out Dr. Neeraj.
‘TAKE CARE OF YOUR MENTAL WELL-BEING’
Dr. Dharmendra Singh believes that coronavirus has especially been hard for people who are already suffering from mental health issues such as anxiety disorders, OCD, and depression. These disorders have increased their underlying impact on people during the pandemic.
“One’s mind is collecting so much negativity from everywhere, whether its newspapers or channels, or knowledge ofsomebody’s death. This can be the reason of enhancement of mental health issues in people already suffering from it. Secondly, people not suffering from disorders also start facing the symptoms because of the vulnerability in the air,” he told Indian Masterminds.
Life has been particularly difficult for people who are social animals. The impact that isolation has had in their life is also making them prone to mental health related diseases. People who have been working for decades suddenly lost their job and became unemployed. With no work to do, people tend to fall in the pit of depression.
Keeping this in mind, Puducherry has also come up with a special tele-consultancy for problems related to mental illness.
The initiative brought about in Puducherry may be the first of its kind in India. It not only acknowledges the mental wrecks which Covid 19 managed to create in its merciless sweep across the length and breadth of India, but has also come out with ways to tackle this particularly troublesome off-shoot of the pandemic. Soon, we will tell more about it to our readers.
