essay about overcoming stress caused by global pandemic " Corona Virus"
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Introduction
Depression is one of the main factors that generates disability in populations in modern societies (Dong et al., 2020; Nuggerud-Galeas et al., 2020). Having experienced epidemics or natural disasters increases long-term levels of depression in populations (Mak et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2018; Morganstein and Ursano, 2020) and may also increase their future suicide rates (Cheung et al., 2008). Experiencing more upsetting events in life and finding it difficult to cope with them are also predictors of anxiety, stress, and depression (Zou et al., 2018). At present, the world is facing a critical situation caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 virus, and this has contributed hugely toward increasing levels of depression in the population in different countries. The situation of the population in some countries which have been severely affected by the epidemic and have little ability to cope, as is occurring in several Latin American countries, is particularly alarming. In the current epidemic crisis, studying the causes of depression in vulnerable contexts can be of great strategic value to help alleviate this illness now and prevent it in the future.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Depression
The SARS-CoV-2 virus particularly affects the respiratory system and is highly infectious, with a long incubation period. The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the disease Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19; Wu et al., 2020). It was first discovered in the city of Wuhan (China) in 2019, but its remarkable ability to spread and its rapid expansion around the world has led the WHO to consider it a pandemic (Rothan and Byrareddy, 2020). This pathogen has now become one of the worst health, social, and economic problems worldwide in recent years (Nicola et al., 2020). A number of studies have shown the impact that COVID-19 can have and its effects on people’s well-being, due to its ability to produce a full-scale mental health crisis, especially in countries with a large number of people affected by the disease (Fiorillo and Gorwood, 2020). A number of studies have already begun to look at psychological disorders such as depression in populations affected by COVID-19 (e.g., Duan and Zhu, 2020; Gao et al., 2020; Huang and Zhao, 2020). Depression is a disorder made up of symptoms associated with low morale—despair, sadness, self-depreciation, and worthlessness—leading to reduced self-esteem and lack of interest in life. The disorder is closely linked to a lower probability of achieving significant life goals for those who suffer from it, with worsening health and with suicide attempts (Antúnez and Vinet, 2012; Roh et al., 2020; Siegrist and Wege, 2020; Zhuo et al., 2020). In order to prevent and alleviate depression during the current crisis and in the post-COVID-19 world, we need to look into the factors associated with this disorder.
Fear of COVID-19, Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
The pandemic has forced many governments to bring in strict laws to stop it from spreading (Adhikari et al., 2020). The governments of the worst affected countries, in terms of number of infections, patients, and mortality levels, such as China, Italy, Spain, and Ecuador, have decreed long periods of self-isolation and/or lockdown, in which citizens have had to stay home. This has seriously affected the living conditions of their populations, and it has been especially detrimental in countries with fewer resources, such as those in the Latin American region. Certain aspects of the disease, such as the uncertainty about how it is spread, its evolution or about the immunity of patients who have been infected, or the absence of a vaccine to counter the disease, have led to an increased feeling of fear among the population (Orellana and Orellana, 2020; Ornell et al., 2020; Rodríguez-Rey et al., 2020).
These fears, generated by the perception of threatening stimuli, have already been seen in previous epidemics, such as those caused by SARS (Reynolds et al., 2008) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (MERS-CoV; Bukhari et al., 2016). Given the severe global threat and impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has produced on different aspects of human survival, health, well-being, and development, Ahorsu et al. (2020) designed a scale to measure the fear of this pathogen based on the existing scientific literature: the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S). This scale has been used in a wide range of countries, such as Iran (Alyami et al., 2020), Bangladesh (Sakib et al., 2020), Italy (Soraci et al., 2020), Turkey (Satici et al., 2020), Russia and Belarus (Reznik et al., 2020), Israel (Tzur Bitan et al., 2020), Peru (Huarcaya-Victoria et al., 2020), and Paraguay (Barrios et al., 2020).
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