‘Coronaphobia’ is more dangerous than ‘Coronavirus’: Factors affecting Mental Health.
Phobia- is one of the most serious mental conditions where a person feels fear in a particular situation or a specific object.
According to A Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School, common phobias are related to fear of flying, heights, insects, animals, and injections, or usually the sight of blood.
Corona- has derived from the new pandemic ‘coronavirus.’
The term coronaphobia emerged in 2020 as the pandemic triggered vastly in the world. During the lockdown phase, there are a lot of things that changed people’s lives in terms of social life, livelihood, economy, and most importantly, mental health. Apparently, mental health is not always a genetic bourn disorder; it is an outcome of various environmental factors.
About coronavirus and its recent updates 2020
Coronavirus is a new pandemic to this world that started in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and due to contagious disease, it has taken over all over the place. Coronavirus has common symptoms like body ache, sore throat, cough, fever, loss of taste, and smell; however, the outcomes of covid 19 are not so common. Covid 19 infection can lead to death, and people with low immunity levels are more prone to detect coronavirus from others.
Besides its outcomes, covid 19 treatment is not completely easy because a person needs to quarantine himself for 14 days minimum as per the guidelines of WHO (2020) as the viruses stay on the surface for a longer period.
Despite that, scientists are still working on coronavirus vaccination; therefore, there are greater chances of fear and complications of covid 19. Besides, the world health organization has introduced a few guidelines to protect from covid 19, for instance, maintaining a 6ft distance, covering mouth and nose, constantly cleaning hands and clothes. For elders, pregnant ladies and children under 6 years old are not allowed to go out amid lockdown as their immunity level is completely lower than others, and fewer changes to cure covid19.
The vaccination of covid 19 is not here yet, but health care providers are constantly working through medicine to suppress the symptoms of covid 19. Therefore, you might get recovered from this disease, but there is also a higher probability of diagnosing covid 19 again.
According to the worldometer, there are 69.6M total cases globally, whereas 44.9M are successfully recovered, and 1.58M people are dead due to covid 19. Among other countries, the United States of America is leading on top with 17M cases, and India is the second most vulnerable country with 9M total cases.
Factors associated with mental health
Socio-cultural factors are the type of environmental influences that induce and reduce the mental health of a person. According to Leighton and Hughes (1961), family culture and norms are linked with mental health where child-rearing behavior, hygiene, nutrition, perception to adapt medical services, etc., are responsible for how we use to express symptoms of mental disorder or any other undesirable disorder.
On the other side, social factors refer to the interaction of society and community on the basis of gender, social class, race and ethnicity, and household patterns, thus maintaining the quality of education, livelihood, and family income by reducing discrimination, violence, and poverty. However, every society and community norms are different from each other, which affects society’s development as a whole.
Education is the key to impart knowledge, skills towards a better world by treating himself and his family well in terms of providing better healthcare service and detecting the disorder early. According to the study of SAMHSA (2016), education and psychological independence are positively interlinked, where 3.9 million people have anxiety with lower education levels and vice versa.
Therefore, people with less educational qualifications have less awareness to cope with psychological disorders. In order to which coronaphobia emerged at higher rates because people are less aware of dealing with the situation.
The economy is the base of any medical treatment; therefore, a family’s economy has a positive relationship with mental health treatment. A similar study was introduced by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (2001), families with low-income status and poor occupation level are more prone to have mental disorders.
A similar study was conducted in 2008, where financial crises were destroying public health sectors and people’s lives individually. Due to coronavirus, there has been a shift in unemployment status that further leads to indebtedness and insecurity and poor primary care for mental disorder diagnosis.
Hence, mental illness, including anxiety, stress, and depression, is completely high amid lockdown as the increase in 19 million adults have a specific phone, and 15 million adults have social phobia. Besides, in the 2020 era of the pandemic, there are more panic disorder populations (6 million) and general anxiety (6.8 million) among the American population.
Coronavirus becoming Coronaphobia
At the beginning of 2020, the novel covid 19 rapidly spread across the globe and infected more than 3 million people in 187 countries, and WHO (2020) report also shows the increase in mortality rate by 13000 in a single month of March.
During the skyrocketing cases of covid 19, there have been high traumatic stress rates at 73.4% with 50% prevalence of depression and 44.7% have generalized anxiety (Lee, 2020). Aside from that, insomnia is one of the major cases increased in lockdown 2020 with 36.1%. It is clear evidence of outbreak impacts on people’s minds that elevates stress, depression, social phobia, health anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.
In the study of Kwasi Ahorsu et al., (2020), a clear relationship of fear due to covid 19 has been identified by developing FCV-19S (The Fear of Covid-19 Scale). The scale has all the factors affecting mental health, including education, income, age, and gender.
It is possible to assess the severity of people’s perception related to covid19 outcomes through the psychometric scale. For instance, anxiety and depression got the highest score on the scale, like “Worrying thoughts go through my mind” (anxiety). On the other side, many respondents respond to “strongly agree” to “I prefer to wash my hands pretty soon after shaking someone’s hand” (germ aversion), which is clearly evident of their fear of getting virus exposure.
The study of coronavirus turning into coronaphobia is necessary because the novel coronavirus has impacted the lives and affected personally and professionally. The fear triggers by the sudden increase of mortality and morbidly rates in the month of March 2020, although it is going to be a whole year, and things are not normal yet.
Coronavirus pandemic has shown us and put us where we have never imagined. Due to the pandemic, economic crises, social distancing, emotional crises, and education backwardness emerge.
According to the recent study and report of the World Health Organisation (2020), the vaccine of coronavirus is not the market yet because continuous trials are going on; hence people still need to maintain the guidelines of covid-19.
Physical illness is visible and measurable, and yet curable. However, mental health is not easy to observe, analyze, and treated in a day or two. And covid-19 not only comes with physical illness symptoms but in this year WHO has recorded the rates of anxiety, depression, fear, phobia, and insomnia due to the major factors affecting the mental health of an individual.
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