Anxiety, depression and loneliness on rise as cities try to ‘slow down’

NEW DELHI: As COVID-19 continues to spread in India, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people seeking help from mental health professionals on how to process the ongoing global crisis and how to deal with not being able to go out. Several therapists and psychologists said that this is being observed across age groups and that urban populations are finding it increasingly difficult to "slow down".

In fact, a recent survey conducted by the Indian Psychiatry Society (Headquartered in Gurugram) showed that queries related to mental health had increased by 20 per cent in the last few weeks.

Besides, data from Practo Health Insights, a global platform that connects healthcare professionals with patients, showed that India has seen a 50 per cent increase in queries related to mental health in the

last two weeks and that metro cities saw a spike of 80 per cent in such queries with most of them coming from people aged between 21-30. Most of them had to do with anxiety, panic attacks, depression and

loneliness.

Dr Poojashivam Jaitly, who treats both children and adults with mental health conditions said that there are two things that are mostly affecting the population in India and the world at large. "The first is the global COVID-19 pandemic and the helplessness and anxiety that comes with realising that almost the entire world had been brought to a standstill. The second is the loneliness that comes from having to stay indoors all the time," she said.

The Practo survey showed that 74 per cent of mental health queries came from men and that most of them came from big cities like Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Dr Jaitly said that a lot of calls were received about not knowing how to deal with the information overload that comes with having to live in the age of the Internet. "A lot of the people calling are finding it difficult to process information and some of it is very suggestible, leading to anxiety and panic attacks," she said.

Dr Jaitly said that people are also falling prey to mass hysteria about COVID-19 and developing psychologically induced symptoms, which is in turn leading to depression. "There was one patient who had caught a cold and thought that he had the disease. So, he had

locked himself in his room and became suicidal thinking about what could happen. This was even after a doctor had confirmed to their family that it was not related to COVID19," she said, adding that the only way urban populations can manage anxiety and panicrelated issues, is to follow a routine regularly.

"Even if you are working from home, it is important to dress up and find at least some activity to engage you for at

least a couple of hours every day," Dr Jaitly said.