COVID 19: Impact and Response (Volume III) ISBN: 978-81-953600-9-3 PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: AN OVERVIEW Deepak Malik"’and V. N. Yadav? ‘Division of Socio-Behavioural and Health Systems Research, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi - 110029, India *Department of Psychology, Central University of Haryana, Mahandergargh, Haryana *Corresponding authors E-mail: malikdeepaki987@gmail.com Introduction: The entire world is going through a challenging time with emergence of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which rapidly approaching throughout the continents, posing an unprecedented challenge (Jones, 2020), and wreaking havoc globally, while also increasing the disease burden (Lai et al., 2020). The World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a "public health emergency of worldwide significance" on January 30, 2020, and declared this a pandemic on March a1". Most COVID-19-related measures have, predictably, focused on restricting or moderating the virus's transmission, testing novel treatment modalities, and developing vaccinations strategies. Due to nationwide lockdowns and home-confinement measures undertaken by most of the countries to prevent disease spread, a large portion of the world’s population is confined to their homes (Rubin and Wessely, 2020; Pulla, 2020). Despite the fact that various researchers and authors foresaw a probable pandemic (Taylor, 2019), the world lacked information on the subject, and the general public, as well as the government, were unprepared. However, adverse psychosomatic outcomes among public are predicted to rise dramatically as a result of the pandemic itself, as well as widely available information and the authenticity of the available information at online social networking platforms. As a result, fast spreading panic over COVID-19 might lead to long-term psychological disorders across all socioeconomic communities, which might be much more harmful in the long run than the virus itself (Depoux et al, 2020). . Previous studies on the health effects of infectious diseases epidemics, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (Lu et af,, 2006; Wing and Leung, 2012), influenza caused by H1N1 (Matsuishi et al. 2012), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (Jeong et a/., 2016), and Ebola virus (Kisely et al., 2020), revealed that mental health 29