By Maloy Kumar Dutta
DHAKA, June 24, 2020 (BSS) – With over nine million confirmed positive cases and nearly half a million global deaths, the outbreak of deadly novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has put the world at stake forcing countries to lockdown everything to keep the human life safe from the invisible enemy.
The death tolls and number of confirmed cases are rising rapidly while the world economy is witnessing a serious threat to cope with the crisis.
Likewise the world, Bangladesh is not different from other countries as the state has reported over 1.19 lakh confirmed cases and over 1500 deaths.
Amidst the crisis period, the people are basically maintaining social distancing and health guidelines by staying at home and working from home to keep them free from being infected by the deadly virus.
This changed way of life has been putting adverse impacts on mental health of people as the number of patients having insomnia and frustration and other mental disorders are increasing during the crisis that has been traumatizing people’s life.
Under the circumstances, psychiatrists suggest making sensible behavior with family members to keep mental health in proper condition.
“It is natural to become anxious and frightened amidst the crisis when a large number of people are dying and getting affected every day. If human being suffers from frustration for long, it could lead him or her to have an unseal lifestyle and even cases of suicides and intolerant acts also increase under such circumstances,” said Dr Helal Uddin Ahmed, an associate professor at National Institute of Mental Health and Hospital here.
He suggested following the World Health Organization (WHO)’s recently formulated two separate guidelines for children-juvenile and adults to improve mental health or to have better mental health.
Prime Minister’s personal physician and medicine specialist Prof AMB Abdullah said family members will have to cooperate with each other to take care of mental health and give much time for each other and be careful about timely and sufficient sleeping.
He suggested paying special attention to elderly members of families as they can suffer from anxiety or mental disorder due to witnessing the coronavirus deaths.
Becoming workless apparently due to lockdown from a busy life is the main cause for mental disorders and human mind naturally makes conflicting behaviors in such situation, he added.
“But we have to maintain disciplines and do physical exercise regularly to keep the mental health in proper condition. We can keep our mind busy in innovative works or by reading books and enhancing communication with dear and near ones,” Abdullah said.
Psychiatrist Dr Mekhla Sarker said children could make unusual behaviors like kidding, getting irritated or frustrated. She suggested guardians to refrain from rebuking children unnecessarily as it could weaken children’s mental health making more agony in life during the tough time.
“Guardians should pay special attention to their children to lessen their monotonous life and thus ties of children with parents and other members could be stronger as in normal time children do not get much time from their parents or other family members for busy lifestyle,” she said.
Dr Wazed Research and Training Institute of Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur and School of Science and Health department of Western Sydney University conducted an online survey in April this year through using social media.
According to the survey results, nearly 91 percent respondents said they are anxious about the coronavirus situation and of them 72 percent respondents are suffering from insomnia and 71 percent respondents are annoyed and irritated over the situation and 63 percent mentioned about their frustration and apprehension of life.
Around 68 percent respondents stated they are frightened over the situation and 59 pc mentioned their lives are getting meaningless during the crisis, survey results added.
Under the circumstances, the experts and physiatrists suggest putting much emphasis on mental health to fight with the global crisis triggered by coronavirus, the invisible enemy of mankind.