Abstract
The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has high infectivity as well as high fatality rates and has haunted the whole world by creating psychosocial disturbances including mass hysteria, economic crisis, and financial instability. The fear generated due to highly contagious COVID-19 termed as “coronaphobia” has produced an excess of adverse psychiatric appearances across a different section of the society. From the time, this highly infectious novel coronavirus has started spreading around the globe with unprecedented pace, have haunted the people of all sections with many psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, fear, and hopelessness. This chapter has been compiled to have a clear idea of the psychological impacts of COVID-19 among the various class of people. The pandemic itself coupled with forced quarantine to fight against novel coronavirus (COVID-19) imposed nation-wide lockdowns as an early measure can produce anxiety, obsession, hoarding, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) in long-term. These psychological disorders have been fueled by an “infodemic” spread via irresponsible media houses and netizens. Outbursts of racism, stigmatization, and xenophobia against a particular community along with the infection of coronavirus have been widely reported. Frontline health care persons are more susceptible to get infected with the disease yet as experiencing adverse psychological outcomes within the kind of anxiety, fear of transmitting the infection to their relatives, depression, and PTSD. For developing a far better response system in coping with these psychological disorders at different section of society, psychological crisis prevention and intervention models should be implemented jointly by the government, health care personnel and other stakeholders.
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Singh, S., Dubey, S., Kumar, N., Goyal, M.K., Pal, I. (2020). Psychological Impacts of COVID-19. In: Goyal, M.K., Gupta, A.K. (eds) Integrated Risk of Pandemic: Covid-19 Impacts, Resilience and Recommendations. Disaster Resilience and Green Growth. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7679-9_7
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