The psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on general population of India

The global COVID-19 pandemic outbreak took origin from the city of Wuhan in China in December, 2019. It caused havoc among the people by the transmission of corona virus from an infected person to a healthy person via the respiratory route. This outbreak, reported in India in the early months of the year 2020, caused the Indian government to enforce strict measurements, policies and precautions to control its spread throughout the country. The Government of India imposed a nationwide lockdown from March 24, 2020, which caused negative effects on the mental status of the people and made them disturbed and afraid of contacting the disease. This study, based on the Hamilton Anxiety Rating (HAM-A) scale, aimed to understand their levels of psychological impact involving anxiety, depression, physiological problems and insomnia during the lockdown. A structured questionnaire was circulated via online platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram through the snowball sampling method so as to collect maximum responses. Informed consent was obtained from the respondents. The results revealed that a majority of people were dealing with anxiety (76.7%), tension (59.6%), fear (69.4%), depression (64.7%) and intellectual problems (59.3%), all ranging from mild to very severe. On the physiological front, majority was towards the negative, with a smaller number of people dealing with cardiovascular problems (13.3%), respiratory problems (12.6%), gastrointestinal problems (23.7%), autonomic problems (27.4%) and somatosensory problems (23.7%) due to the lockdown, again ranging from mild to very severe. Almost half (44.9%) suffered from a certain level of insomnia due to the lockdown. Due to this high level of impact, there is an urgent requirement to attend to the mental issues of the people during the COVID-19 outbreak.