Psychological Health amidst COVID-19: A Review of existing literature in the Indian Context

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a global health crisis. As of now, the total confirmed cases have exceeded 50 million and total deaths more than 1 million across the world. Such widespread diseases in the past have been associated with a surge in mental health disturbances. In this backdrop, the present review article pertains to discuss the overall impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health by synthesizing the existing literature from India, using PRISMA technique. The articles have been retrieved from Google scholar, NCBI and PubMed database. The result obtained on synthesizing the literature indicates that lockdown (home confinement) and social distancing as a measure to mitigate the outbreak of disease have affected physical and mental well-being. There has been an increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders due to sustained stress related to COVID-19. It has led to a medico-socio-economic crisis around the world. The pandemic continues to evolve with several countries experiencing multiple waves due to continuous mutations in the virus. Hence, it is essential to carefully observe and monitor the impact of COVID-19 on the onset and progression of poor mental health.

COVID-19 and the Adaptive Role of Educators: The Impact of Digital Literacy and Psychological Well-Being on Education—A PLS-SEM Approach

“…Among others, feeling of restraint, stress, reluctance, and lethargy are significant mental health symptoms. Psychologists have raised concern over a possible rise ( Shukla & Manohar, 2021 ) of such problems owing to COVID-19. Recent studies ( Karakose et al, 2022a ) offer consistent evidence that the psychological distress, burnout, and depression have increased over the period of the pandemic and show an affinity to social media addiction.…”

“…Children connected via a computer lack learning through peers ( Pregowska et al, 2021 ) nevertheless adopted more in the family sub-culture. It may harm the equal opportunity for education, especially in a period where depressive disorders have been increased due to pandemics ( Shukla & Manohar, 2021 ) leading to additional socioeconomic crises around the world. It develops regional and cross-sectional variations in the socioeconomic status ( Zaw et al, 2021 ) dimension of the societies in similar countries.…”

“…It has been true for other regions too, for instance, COVID-19-related psychological distress directly affected depression, and social media addiction in Turkey ( Karakose et al, 2022 ). Managing physical as well as mental health during the pandemic is challenging as pointed out by Shukla and Manohar (2021) , especially in countries like Sri Lanka where the total number of mental health workers per 100,000 population is around 7.14 (World Health Organization, 2018). Growth of stress, depression, and anxiety among individuals due to economic repercussions ( Mia & Griffiths, 2021 ) provide evidence for the incalculable societal impact ( Watermeyer et al, 2021 ) caused by COVID-19.…”

Resilience and Prosocial Behavior Among Chinese University Students During COVID-19 Mitigation: Testing Mediation and Moderation Models of Social Support

“… 9–11 A high prevalence of mental, psychiatric, and behavioral health problems, such as PTSD, depressive symptoms, and sleep disturbances has been reported among this community. 4 , 12 Although the COVID-19 outbreak has been effectively controlled in mainland China, recent outbreaks in South and Southeast Asia, such as India 13 and Indonesia 14 and the rise in the delta variant have continued to challenge governments and medical institutions. This is especially obvious in middle- and low-income nations, showing the persist influence of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Positive Cognitive Triad and Covid-19 Fears: An Empirical Investigation

“…The COVID -19, has created a host of negative mental health problems in people, both infected and non-infected, across the globe. Studies have revealed that people experienced relatively increased psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, perceived stress, post-traumatic stress symptoms (Gopal, et al, 2020;Roy et al 2020;Shukla & Singh, 2021), helplessness, hopelessness (Kochhar et al 2020), sleep problem (Majumdar et al 2020) because of the pandemic. Of all the mental health problems, fears and anxiety have been the most common and widespread to everyone (Lunn et al 2020;Xiang, et al 2020).…”