Psychological Impacts on

The Mental Health of

People Quarantined
During Pandemic

Submitted By:
Ashley Faith L. Concepcion

Submitted to:
Dr. Lorylin Simbajon
 Introduction

Background Information

The world has witnessed the appearance and spread of a generation of

viruses endangering the global health and affecting each and everyone’s life.
They began with SARS-CoV in China and then, were spread to many Southeast
Asian countries, North America, Europe, and Africa. Nine years later, a new
coronavirus was recognized in the Middle East known as MERS-CoV, through
which patients were involved with acute respiratory illness.

In late 2019, an unknown disease in China was reported to the World

Health Organization (WHO), which was originally called nCoV-2019 (new
coronavirus-2019). Then, it was officially renamed COVID_19 by WHO in 2020.
COVID-19 quickly became one of the world's crises of the century. Until August
14, 2020, WHO database confirmed 20,730,456 cases of coronavirus globally
with 751,154 reported deaths.

Due to high prevalence, high mortality rate, and the consequences that
home quarantines have created for countries, it seems that having a healthy
living environment is one of the main concerns of the people from several
aspects (Zarrabi and Hosseini,2020). People tend to feel anxious and unsafe when the
environment changes. In the case of infectious disease outbreaks, when the cause or
progression of the disease and outcomes are unclear, rumours grow and close‐minded
attitudes eventuate (Ren et al. 2020). People’s responses to fear and intolerance of
uncertainty lead to negative societal behaviours (Rubin & Wessely 2020). Health organizations
and health care professionals are focusing on controlling the COVID-19 pandemic by recommending self-
isolation, social distancing and quarantine, with the slightest emphasis on the impact of psychological
health (‘Coronavirus disease situation reports’, 2020). The emergence, prevalence and transmission of
COVID-19 are beyond physical health, and emotional distress, anxiety, fear, depression, suicidality,
public stigma, discrimination, racism, xenophobia, posttraumatic symptoms and sleep disturbance are
some of the consequences on psychological health. It is noteworthy the spaces involved in
the quarantine, as it involves separating and restricting the movement of
people who have been potentially exposed to a contagious disease, in order to
check whether they are sick, thereby reducing the risk of infecting other
people.

OBJECTIVE OF STUDY

The main purpose of this study is to determine the effects or impacts on

the mental health of quarantined people during these times of pandemic
wherein public are dealing with this virus named COVID-19 specially, the
sought answers to the following Objectives:

1. To meet the major source of information about the novel of Coronavirus

2. Analyzing the role of mental health of Quarantined people during

pandemic

3. Conceiving whether it only provides fact or not

4. Knowing toxic information about Pandemic

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this paper is to search and find answers about the
preferences of the healthy and efficient home parameters from the residents'
point of view, considering the prevalence of COVID_19 disease. The present
study was performed in Tehran as one of the largest cities in Iran with the
highest incidence of the disease. The importance of this is that identifying
resident priorities can provide better solutions and improve housing
development programs to increase home quality. Since the highest presence
time during the quarantine period has been inside the house, the survey of
residents has much concentrated on interior architecture in this study.
 RELATED LITERATURE

People tend to feel anxious and unsafe when the environment changes.
In the case of infectious disease outbreaks, when the cause or progression of
the disease and outcomes are unclear, rumours grow and close‐minded
attitudes eventuate (Ren et al. 2020). People’s responses to fear and intolerance
of uncertainty lead to negative societal behaviours (Rubin &
Wessely 2020). Health organizations and health care professionals are focusing
on controlling the COVID-19 pandemic by recommending self-isolation, social
distancing and quarantine, with the slightest emphasis on the impact of
psychological health (‘Coronavirus disease situation reports’, 2020). The
emergence, prevalence and transmission of COVID-19 are beyond physical
health, and emotional distress, anxiety, fear, depression, suicidality, public
stigma, discrimination, racism, xenophobia, posttraumatic symptoms and
sleep disturbance are some of the consequences on psychological health.

Lockdown resulting in self-isolation, quarantine and social distancing is

far beyond than leisure time vacations for improved functioning – it is a
collective traumatic event which poses serious threat to people and have
resulted in great loss of lives and property for every individual (Mukhtar, 2020).
COVID-19 is an individual and collective traumatic event and directly or
indirectly has affected every individual in the world. All efforts should be
directed toward minimizing the negative effects of this traumatic COVID-19
pandemic event on ‘survivors’. Vulnerable population such as children, older
adults, pregnant women, people with existing physical and mental illnesses,
victims of abuse and violence, living with abusers and perpetrators, people
living below the poverty line and other individuals are susceptible of not just
contracting the coronavirus but the psychological trauma as well. Many people
are going through interpersonal traumatic events as well in addition to the
collective traumatic COVID-19: domestic violence (gender-based violence),
abuse, financial burden, loneliness, emotional and behavioral problems, grief
and bereavement, fear of losing family, mental health issues, and physical
injuries or fatalities.

Mass media and social media platforms play a crucial role in providing
information regarding the corona virus (Srivastava et al, 2019). They do send
good and bad updates about the everything that’s been happening in the world
right now especially about the global health; they’re targeting precise and
intended audience for each news most especially the public health. The
psychological impact of the news and media to the public was intense (Faragas
and Kiriaze, 2006). Mass media became the main source of information in the
current pandemic. With us being in the modernized era, we were endulged with
the advancement of technology and increased accessibility to the internet and
media.

Hence, public health manifolds information. Finally, we describe a

comprehensive list of outcomes relevant to the evaluation of social media on
the public’s health (Schillinger and Chittamuru, 2020).

This survey was conducted in the first month that COVID-19 was
declared a pandemic and enhanced community quarantine was implemented
in the Philippines. To our knowledge, this was the first study that examined the
psychological impact of COVID-19 to the general population in the country.
During this time, 16.3% of the respondents reported moderate to severe
psychological impact; 16.9% of the respondents reported moderate to severe
depressive symptoms; 28.8% reported moderate to severe anxiety symptoms;
and 13.4% reported moderate to severe stress signals.

CONCLUSION

During the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines,

one-fourth of the respondents reported moderate-to-severe anxiety, one-
seventh reported moderate-to-severe stress levels and one-sixth reported
moderate-to-severe depression and psychological impact of the outbreak.
Female gender, youth age of 12-21 years, single status, students, presence of
specific physical symptoms (i.e., headache, cough, chills), recent imposed
quarantine by a health authority, prolonged stay at home, poor self-reported
health status, feeling of too much unnecessary worry has been made about
COVID-19, concerns about family members getting sick, and feeling of being
discriminated by other countries were associated with a greater psychological
impact of the pandemic and higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression.
Timely and accurate health information, having children older than 16 years
old, perception of good health status and confidence in their own health care
providers were associated with lesser psychological impact of the pandemic and
lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression. The findings of this study can be
used to frame psychological interventions appropriately to avert occurrence of
mental health problems preventing psychological crisis.