Public Health Measures (Lockdown) and its Psychological Impact: A General Population Study of Mental Health Difficulties during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Resultant Lock Down
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51983/arss-2020.9.1.1606Keywords:
Coping strategies, COVID-19, Perceived stress, Psychological distress, PTSD, StressAbstract
Public health measures taken to prevent the spread of pandemics such as COVID-19 can negatively impact on the mental health of individuals. This study reports perceived stress, sources of stress, psychological distress, and post-traumatic stress disorder in 1073 adults from Kerala, India during the lockdown phase. Methods: Data was gathered using these questionnaires: Perceived Stress Scale, Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and PC-PTSD scale. Results: Descriptive analyses revealed that 65.7% of participants experienced increased stress levels due to the lockdown; with 57.4% experiencing moderate and 8.3% of experiencing severe stress. Discussion: The major sources of stress were anxiety about the future, finance-related, frustration of movement due to restriction and anxiety about COVID. Although there were no cases of PTSD, about 30% of the sample suffered from severe psychological distress. The above issues should be addressed by policy makers and health care professionals in trying to ameliorate the psychological distress experienced by people during pandemic-related lockdown in the future.
References
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. (n.d.). COVID-19 cases in India. Retrieved June 5, 2020, from https://www.mohfw.gov.in/
Rahim, A. A., & Chacko, T. V. (2019). Nipah outbreak in North Kerala – What worked? Insights for future response and recovery based on examination of various existing frameworks. Indian Journal of Public Health, 63(3), 261–264.
Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 385–396.
Kessler, R. C., Andrews, G., Colpe, L. J., Hiripi, E., Mroczek, D. K., Normand, S. L. T., Walkters, E. E., & Zaslavsky, A. M. (2020). Short Screening Scales to Monitor Population Prevalences and Trends in Non-Specific Psychological Distress. Cambridge University Press.
Prins, A., Bovin, M. J., Kimerling, R., Kaloupek, D. G., Marx, B. P., Pless Kaiser, A., Schnurr, P. P. (2015). Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5 (PC-PTSD-5) [Measurement instrument]. Available from https://www.ptsd.va.gov.
Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267–283.
Yoon, M. K., Kim, S. Y., Ko, H. S., & Lee, M. S. (2016). System effectiveness of detection, brief intervention and refer to treatment for the people with post-traumatic emotional distress by MERS: A case report of community-based proactive intervention in South Korea. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 10, 51.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Stress and Coping. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html. Last accessed on April 30, 2020.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 The Research Publication
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
