Anxiety Disorders On The Rise Due To Fear Of Covid-19

Do I have COVID? What happens if I get it? The brother-in-law of the security guard who met my neighbour with whom I was briefly in contact has tested positive, does that mean I have COVID, too? Should I get tested?

- Suhas Yellapantula

Over the past few weeks, doctors have been flooded with several such questions as our nation continues to grapple with the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health experts believe that apart from the virus itself, the fear of contracting the virus is taking a huge toll on people’s wellbeing. “Until COVID happened, the term mass hysteria was only confined to the dictionary. But now, we as a human race are experiencing this mass hysteria. People are being consumed by fear of the virus and this fear is killing people more than the virus itself,” says Dr Manoj Kuriakose, homeopathy practitioner and founder, Dr Manoj’s Homeopathy. “If you fall sick, your body has the ability to fight the illness. It’s important to trust your body’s instincts, wait for the body to tell you if there is a problem. In many cases, people are panicking even before their immune system prepares its defence against the virus. Influenced by misinformation on social media, they are taking unnecessary medication, getting themselves hospitalised for mild symptoms, etc. This is also placing an additional burden on our already overwhelmed healthcare system,” explains Manoj.

Agreeing, Dr Minhaj Nasirabadi, consultant psychiatrist and Head of Department of Psychiatry at Deccan College of Medical Sciences, says, “Fear of catching an illness causes anxiety, leads to panic, and makes people hyper-vigilant. There has been a rise in patients with extreme anxiety disorder. We’re seeing many people develop acute psychiatric illness due to fear of contracting COVID.”