Mental Illness Goes Viral

Given the recent spike in numbers, it is clear mental ill-health is now India’s second, quieter pandemic

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

For four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on March 24, Preeti Borkar* barely got out of bed. The 46-year-old Mumbai-based English teacher didn’t want to eat or speak. “Ever since I heard that COVID-19 had reached India, I started getting panic attacks. It was getting difficult for me to breathe, and that being a COVID symptom, I thought I had contracted it,” she says. “I kept thinking of what would happen if one of my family members contracted the virus; that we would be dumped in some hospital on a dirty bed and I would be left all alone to die.” Soon enough, she imagined she had fever and a sore throat. Having been in therapy since 2005 for depression, Borkar knew she needed medical intervention. She sought out a psychiatrist who gave her a new prescription which helped alleviate her symptoms.

Psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty of Mumbai’s Dr L.H. Hiranandani Hospital feels the COVID-19 outbreak can be particularly difficult for the likes of Borkar, patients who already suffer a mental health affliction: “There is a sudden sense of shock, fear of death or separation from family.” Weeks into the lockdown, we now even have evidence of otherwise ‘healthy’ people exhibiting signs of anxiety and depression that resemble pathological symptoms. For those with existing diagnoses, COVID is that very kind of stressor doctors often ask them to guard against.

SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM