The medication of a 30-year-old man with severe obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) had to be re-adjusted as he became extremely paranoid about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and feared he would contract the infection.
In another case, a 20-year-old woman, who had travelled to Europe last month, had to be prescribed a mild dose of anti-anxiety medication as she could not deal with thoughts of being infected even though she presented no persistent symptoms. As COVID-19 cases multiply, many people, especially those with existing mental health issues, are finding it challenging to cope with the prevailing panic and have reached out to psychiatrists.
“It is difficult for those with existing anxiety, OCD, and depression issues and queries from them have been increasing. They are getting anxious with the slightest of symptoms and sometimes with no symptoms at all,” said Dr. Kersi Chavda, psychiatrist, who treated the 30-year-old man as well as the 20-year-old woman.
Nervous time
“The patient with OCD required a lot of reassurance that he was unlikely to catch the infection. But eventually, I had to re-adjust his dosage,” said Dr. Chavda. The woman, Dr. Chavda added, went to Kasturba Hospital to get herself checked, but continued to be nervous and had to be put on anti-anxiety medication. “She had no history of anxiety, but this episode pushed her to seek help,” he said.
Another city-based psychiatrist Dr. Hozefa Bhinderwala said the caller tune on COVID-19 has also played a considerable role in triggering anxiety. “Just imagine a person having to listen to the message 25 times a day or even more. It will definitely have an impact,” said Dr. Binderwala, who has received many queries from his patients to know more about the virus. “Some of my patients are simply panic-stricken and are calling me for authentic information,” he said.
Doctors said fake social media messages are also adding to the panic. “Many of these messages have wrong figures about the number of confirmed cases. People should not believe any such messages which don’t have any authenticity,” said Dr. Daksha Shah, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s health officer
Doctors also recommend temporarily staying off social media to avoid anxiety.
