UNDIP Psychologists: The Potential of Psychological Disorders during the Covid-19 Pandemic
The outbreak or pandemic of Covid-19 which demands a change in behavior in society has the potential to cause serious psychological disorders and threaten the productivity of society.
Dean of the Faculty of Psychology Undip, Dian Ratna Sawitri SPsi MSi Ph.D. said that the potential for psychological disorders needs special attention.
She stated that the changes in behavior related to pandemics are generally divided into three. “There are behavior changes called protective behavior, preparedness behavior, and perverse behavior. The three changes in behavior each have implications that can lead to psychological disorders,”
As a positive illustration of Covid-19 in Indonesia until Thursday, November 10, there were 598,033 cases, and the number of infected people in the world was 69 million people with a death rate of over 1.5 million which encourage the World Health Organization to declare a health emergency of the international community.
As a consequence, there are social restrictions, such as school and university activities changing into the study from home, limited office activities, which result in the emergence of work from home. Also, the policy of closing entertainment and tourism venues has resulted in increased unemployment due to layoffs.
Sawitri said that the community could accept restrictions at first, by being patient and hoping that the situation would soon recover. However, when the outbreak situation became prolonged, the community was restless and various psychological disorders emerged which could be grouped into three patterns.
The first group, protective behavior, is actions taken by individuals to comply with health regulations to stop the spread of disease. Protective behavior includes personal hygiene and social distancing. Personal hygiene is manifested in the form of actions such as wearing masks, washing hands, avoiding eating outside the home, spraying disinfectants, ensuring adequate air ventilation in the room. Meanwhile, social distancing is done by maintaining distance to prevent the spread of the virus, avoiding crowds, and delaying traveling.
To a certain extent, social distancing is also manifested in the act of carrying out self-quarantine when realizing that he is interacting with suspects and/or parties infected with Covid-19 or because he has just traveled long distances using public transportation.
Limitation of social relations and quarantine can lead to reduced physical activity, feelings of sadness, isolation, boredom, and loneliness. This condition, she said, quoting Safai and Sganga, opens up opportunities for the increasing prevalence of depression, consumption of alcohol and drugs, addiction or internet addiction, and domestic violence, stated by her.
She revealed adjustments in work such as learning new things and dealing with changes that are fast, frequent, and drastic bias have serious implications. This can take the form of decreased job satisfaction, even increased burnout, namely a condition of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that a person experiences due to excessive and prolonged stress.
Besides, implementing the work from home is not a simple thing. Adjustments to the situation and residents of the house are required. Especially for those who have school-age children, assisting children who are facing new learning situations while doing work from home leads them to be over exhausted and depressed.
The second change in behavior, preparedness behavior, is a behavior aimed at ensuring the availability of resources needed by individuals to be able to make an appropriate response to inhibit and stop the spread of the virus. For example, looking for relevant information about the distribution of cases, the number of infected people, government intervention, buying hand sanitizers, masks, face shields, and daily necessities.
Be warned, seeking information about pandemics sometimes opens up opportunities for confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety. The reaction becomes serious for individuals who have anxious personalities, especially those who already have anxiety-related psychological disorders such as fear of being infected with a virus, fear of contact with objects that are suspected of transmitting the virus, afraid of strangers. There will be compulsive behaviors such as washing hands excessively, always cleaning objects to be touched, and spraying disinfectants even in normal conditions.
A third behavior change called perverse behavior, which is a behavior that is different from what is considered normal by society, such as avoiding hospital visits and obsessing over buying anti-viral drugs themselves.
A literature review conducted by Usher et al (2020) illustrates that although the three changes in behavior are responses that contribute to inhibiting the spread of the coronavirus, they are positively correlated with increased anxiety, heightened anxiety, and more intense, stress experienced by individuals.
The Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, Undip, suggested that there should be special handling of changes in behavior and social conditions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is necessary to mitigate the impact of a pandemic on people’s mental health.
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