Will mental health issues see a decrease with the pandemic behind us?

Pandemics leave lasting footprints on human minds by implanting them with bitter memories. During adverse situations,like the recent coronavirus outbreak, almost everybody got affected. 

However, the ripple effects of the biggest global crisis in generations eclipsed all efforts to rebuild societies and had far-reaching repercussions on long-term psychological and mental health of individuals, the scale of which probably won’t be understood in years or even decades to come.

As the Covid-19 pandemic enters its third year, more fast-spreading variants are raising their ugly heads in many countries, causing a surge in infections and imposition of further lockdowns, further aggravating the situation by depriving people of vital social contact. 

In some ways, this mental health crisis is being seen as an emergency as severe as the disease itself and one that requires immediate attending to.

A seven-country survey carried out by Ipsos, a leading global market research firm for ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, reveals that more than half of the respondents (51% to be exact), said that the pandemic had a negative effect on their mental health.

Another study carried out by the Queen’s University, Belfast during the period of lockdown found that more than a quarter of the respondents (26.6%) rated themselves 7 or higher on a scale of 9 on the loneliness front, despite a majority of them holding secure jobs(71.9%).

Since the link between loneliness and mental diseases like depression is well-established, these figures are all the more worrying as feelings of isolation are bound to have a negative impact on the mental well-being of a person.

As the world battles with the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, new findings published by the BMJ in February 2022 suggest that the pandemic has been linked with an increase in risk of mental health disorders, mainly anxiety and depression among the survivors of up to a year after the infection.

Senior author of the study Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University, opines that the Covid-19 infections have likely contributed to addition of 14.8 million new cases of mental health disorders worldwide, including 2.8 million in the U.S. alone.

” Our calculations do not account for the untold number of people, likely in millions, who suffered in silence due to the mental health stigma or lack of resources or support” said Ziyad Al-Aly.

The researchers followed up their studies for one year to estimate the risks of the outcomes of the anxiety and depression disorders and found that people who had Covid-19 showed 60% higher risk of depression after one year as compared to non-infected groups.

To curb the wave of the pandemic, almost all countries around the world undertook containment strategies that imposed social distancing and more importantly self-isolation. Italy, the most affected country, was quarantined from March 9, 2020 to May 3rd 2020 for a total of 55 days, resulting in a gradual decrease of new infections.

In the midst of all this, digital technologies came to the fore and displayed their potential to support people in the fight against the Covid-19. Before the current health crisis, emerging technology solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI) were primarily used in entertainment productivity, but now AI helps in the development of vaccines and updating scientific information.

AI has also enabled public health mobile applications to manage Covid-19 for users, complete with different levels of safeguards for users. Once downloaded, the application will allow individuals to monitor their own health and alert them if they have interacted with an infected individual and provide a real-time assessment of their exposure to the virus.

Telemedicine was a largely unknown and under utilized sector until the pandemic set in. But at the very onset, things changed drastically as in-person care transitioned almost instantly to remote consultation, facilitated by waived regulations and payment parity.

Covid-19 caused a massive acceleration of telehealth, especially in the United States, and is expected to be an integral part of health care for some time to come. In particular, virtual therapy sites have seen an extraordinary rise in traffic and popularity. However, many of these telehealth flexibilities are temporary in nature and will lapse at the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency.

While telehealth usage soared in the first six months of the pandemic, it has been steadily declining as the signs of its ending are near. That said, it is still utilized more than before the onset of Covid-19.

According to a report of Feb 2022 analyzing use of telehealth between March 2019 and August 2021 using data from Epic’s Cosmos database, a HIPPA complaint Limited Data Set of over 126 million patients from 156 Epic organizations, which included clinics and hospitals  some key findings were:

• While telehealth rose from less than 1% prior to the pandemic to 13% of outpatient visits in the first six months, the rate declined to 11% during the next six months and then to 8% a year into the pandemic.
• At the beginning of the pandemic, adults and children aged 19-64 used telehealth for 14% and 18% respectively of outpatient visits. As the pandemic lingered on, older patients continued to use telemedicine less than the younger patients, reflecting generational differences in comfort using technology.

Satisfaction with telehealth apps and text messaging declined, although not by much as compared to live video chats, on the other hand satisfaction with live phone calls rose, while satisfaction with e-mails remain unchanged 

All these statistics suggest a decline in telehealth usage, now that the pandemic is seen to be practically over or at least contained.