Article Published In Vol.10 (Jan-Feb 2022)

Mental health needs during COVID-19 pandemic: A descriptive analysis

Author : Sunanda Govinder Thimmajja and Sreevani Rentala

Back ground: The Covid-19 pandemic has alarming signal for individual and collective health and emotional and social functioning. In addition to providing medical care, health care providers have an important role in monitoring psychosocial needs and delivering psychosocial support to their patients, and the public that should be integrated into general pandemic health care.

Aim: Assess the perceived need for mental health support during COVID-19.

Methods & Results: A cross-sectional study design was adopted. 78 university employees recruited in the study; they were participated in the sensitizing education programme on Coping during COVID-19 pandemics organized by their parental university. Participants were administered the self-instructed questionnaires for collecting data.  The instruments are used are the Fear of COVID-19 Scale and Perceived Mental Healthcare needs during COVID-19 pandemic scale. The results evidenced that majority expressed uncomfortable when thinking of corona infection [56.4%] and expressed fear on getting infection [53.8%]. And also, majority accepted perceived need for mental health professional support during COVID-19 pandemics’ [97.4%] & majority expressed [94.9 %] and suggested that people who are affected with covid-19 must obtain the help from mental health professionals.

Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic is turning out to be a major stressor for most of humanity. The initial focus is necessarily on the physical consequences of the infection. However, there is recognition that the significant psychological consequences emerging out of this catastrophe need to be addressed.

Keywords: COVID-19, Mental health, pandemics, psychological support.