Take precautions, but don’t panic

The global climatechanges of our planet, the air connectivity & the international exchangehave gifted us the COVID 19. It is cutting across the countries to pandemicproportions leading to anxiety, acute stress to real or impending threat ofvirus, and widespread panic attacks apart from medical morbidity and death.Though we are not new to these threats as we have defeated flu like illnesspsychologically earlier, but media coverage has highlighted COVID 19 as aliteral death threat. This has led to hoarding of masks, hand sanitizers andvirtual absence of related medical equipments from the market inclusive of online availability as well.

Resilience, notpanic is the psychological remedy. The fear pendulum of COVID is swinginggradually from denial to crisis and what is required at this time is sensiblehealth policy to avoid spreading of this highly contagious disease. Everyone isfocusing on quarantine and rightly so, but that itself from mental health pointof view would cause short term fall outs like irritability, frustration,anxiety and fear psychosis which would need a psychiatrist’s intervention andif isolation is prolonged to a long term phenomenon called post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with likelysubstance abuse as well. The disease has started crossing continents from Chinato Iran, Italy, Middle East, India and now our valley as well. As a mentalhealth professional I must emphasise that it’s high time we should be geared upto tackle panic attacks, hysteria and anxiety. I believe in our set up the oldproverb “a lie has no legs but a scandal has wings” really holds. These commonmental health conditions will travel, I am afraid, more quickly than the ideaof resilience and hope. When any treatment is still awaited there will be adownhill course to despair with far reaching consequences, unless positivemental health is promoted by our doctors to augment psychological supportsystem. This can be best achieved by people working together, and promotingmutual trust. Washing hands thoroughly, not touching face, keeping a gooddistance from a sick, are reasonable measures, but quarantining whole communityis certainly not advisable and as psychiatrists we must offer these days counselingfor parallel social greetings viz a viz to hand shaking and act as a resourceto community and religious heads as well..

   

Once again I willfocus on resilience as it is most important tool which gives people thepsychological strength to cope with stress. It carries people through traumaand prevents them to fall apart. Fortunately our society is resilient to a goodextent but it can be learnt by many ways as well, like we should avoid tryingto solve problems with same thinking that created it, By staying tough, keepgrowing and by staying prepared. A simple, but one of the best ways to be resilient is to be aware of what’shappening. By remaining aware a resilient person can control an awkwardsituation and think of new strategies to tackle issues. A typical person is notonly aware of his emotions but also the behavior of his people around him. Herethe internet and media I am afraid may act as a double edged sword. With itsinstant, indiscriminate reductive messages will spread panic, anxiety andhopelessness very fast.  What is expectedof a psychiatrist and mental health professional at this stage is to providepsychological support through its support teams, promote correct knowledge andspread it as quickly as possible. The electronic counseling and mental healthscreening directly as well as by referral for depression, anxiety, panic andsuicidality has to be taken up as soon as possible. With the availability ofcompetent psychiatrists in all district hospitals of our valley and promotion ofDMHP units by Director health surely  the mental health crisisif any would  be taken care of.

To conclude, ponderover the quote of World Health Organization Director General, Dr. Tedross:”It’s easy to blame, easy to politicize, but it’s harder to tackle a problemtogether and find solutions together”. Let’s be mentally tough to counter COVID19 in our part of the world.

Dr Imtiyaz Mansur MDis Sr. Consultant Psychiatry & Nodal Officer Mental Health,  Directorate Of Health Services Kashmir

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