Here I discuss the psychological impact of the COVID 19 outbreak as I want to understand what is quarantine and why people are afraid of this.
Quarantine which means separation and imposes a restriction on the movement of people to stop spreading infection from people who believe they have been exposed to the disease. This separation from society and their own loved ones, prohibition over movement and the insecurity over infection creates dull situation among them.
Due to the social and physical isolation as well as quarantine stress, anxiety and panic are innate from fear. Because of this fear we all are trying hard to survive no matter what.
People treat quarantine as a threat over Covid19 and this may affect to hide their symptoms and quickly try to escape out of fear. This is one of the main reasons for this uncontrollable spreading of the virus.
When large areas are quarantined, there is a risk of large numbers being exposed to the virus as well. This is the scenario happened in China’s Hubei province. Under strict travel restrictions, they had shortages of food, medicine and other supplies. This rule has put most of the people who had certain health conditions at risk.
Quarantining entire areas increasing the chance that healthy people will become exposed too. This has happened in many of cruise ships including the diamond princess.
Quarantines also push to social isolation, which can severely affect mental health.
Keep isolating the infected people is a must but for other healthy people, either self-quarantine or social distancing should be imposed without making unnecessary panic. Most of the people are afraid of being isolated and that is the biggest hidden threat of this COVID 19 infection. People have to quarantine in their own houses with their family members and have a fear that they can infect them.
Another reason people avoid screening and hiding from medical assistance is that they don't want to be discredited in the community as responsible for the spread of the virus.
To stop these suspects are running away, all authorities should focus on building a faith that suspects and corona infected patients will be treated with respect. Therefore don’t blame or criticizing them because of their mentality to hide or running away as they are in terrible condition. Also some people don’t like to be isolated and because of that they try to stay away from being diagnosed.
According to a research conducted during the SARS outbreak they found various negative responses during the quarantine period: over 20% reported fear, 18% reported nervousness, 18% reported sadness and 10% reported guilt. (Reynolds, D. L., Garay, J. R., Deamond, S. L., Moran, M. K., Gold, W., & Styra, R. (2008). Understanding, compliance and psychological impact of the SARS quarantine experience).
However I feel that the world is resetting and refreshing. nature also the same. And this fear we face helps us to learn to avoid dangerous situations in the future through the process of negative reinforcement.
~Imali 03/04/2020
