New Delhi: The coronavirus pandemic is taking a toll on the mental health of people. They are not necessarily COVID patients and may not have a previous history. The pandemic is believed to be worsening anxiety disorders in people, causing patients to relapse and also affecting those who may never have experienced them before, reported The Print.
According to reports from counsellors and psychiatrists from different cities, the number of patients approaching them with anxiety disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and panic disorders, has been on the rise since the pandemic kicked in, reported The Print.
What is the trigger?
- Fear of illness, of contracting a disease that has killed over 7.6 lakh people worldwide and doesn’t appear to be abating
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
“Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have witnessed a relapse in their symptoms and are now coming back with more severe symptoms,” Dr Kaustubh Joag, senior research fellow with the Pune-based Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy was quoted as saying by The Print.
“The new normal is cleaning (since it’s a key Covid-prevention measure) but, with OCD patients, the cleaning is almost of a ritualistic nature. Where you may wash your hands once, they will wash hands 10-15 times,” he added.
Explaining OCD, he said, “The disorder is made of two words — obsessions, which are recurring thoughts, images or ideas that lead to fear or anxiety. Compulsions are behaviours that pacify this anxiety.
“So, these create a cycle for people with OCD, when the obsessive thoughts recur, the resulting action will help pacify these fears, so patients with this disorder keep repeating these behaviours to calm their fears.”
It qualifies as a disorder, he said, when the activities become pervasive enough to start affecting their daily life functions, the report added.
“On the anxiety spectrum, apart from OCD, cases of panic disorder have increased as well. Its psychological effects, as most people already know, are worrying thoughts, but its physical effects are more worrisome and usually mimic whatever disease patients are worried about,” the report quoted Joag as saying.
“So, patients of anxiety, right now, are feeling shortness of breath, tightness in their chest, or complaining of a stuffy nose, they don’t realise it is an anxiety symptom and relate these symptoms to COVID. This leads to heightened anxiety.”
Dr Milan Balkrishnan, a psychiatrist with Bombay Hospital told The Print that 60 per cent of all patients who have approached him during the pandemic are “on the anxiety spectrum”, up from 50 per cent in the times before.
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