Embedded Files
personal desires in order to oblige to a common good (Bavel et al., 2020). As a result, the mental health outcomes derived from this pandemic rely deeply on the level of cultural impact in the community (Furlong and Finnie, 2020). Media and Access to Information As a worldwide unprecedented health issue, COVID-19 pandemic has drawn massive attention from the media. Nonetheless, the supply of information regarding the disease has heavily surpassed the demand from the population (Liu and Liu, 2020). This phenomenon has two main repercussions in respect to the mental health impact. First, the manner by which media vehicles have been portraying the current situation to the community might be causing great harm in terms of psychological implications. This can be easily translated as an analogy with vicarious traumatization, a process suffered by the health staff in command when listening to the victims’ narration of traumatic events they experienced (Liu and Liu, 2020). Similarly, the negative exposure of individuals to ruthless details concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to promote great psychological distress in the society. During these times, pessimistic reports have prevailed in the correspondence with the public, including daily updates on the number of those infected and number of deaths, economic impact and uncertainty about the future. This consequently increases negative emotions throughout the community and makes people more susceptible to panic. An illustration of this matter is the display of images of empty shelves and panicked shoppers during the first months of the pandemic. Even though this may have been used as a critic, it induced viewers to look out after themselves and foster individuality and competitiveness (Bavel et al., 2020). Secondly, as information travels at an uncontrollable speed, it is virtually impossible to control the accuracy and authenticity of the majority of news in circulation. As expressed by the Director-General of the WHO, in addition to the fight to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the world is currently facing an “infodemic” (Dubey et al., 2020; Zarocostas, 2020). It is characterized not only by the massive frequency of fake and inaccurate news (Irwin, 2020), but also conspiracy theories and misinformation, which puts the public through the distress of having to distinguish between scientific evidence and unreliable information (Depoux et al., 2020). The repercussions of this phenomenon are numerous and deleterious, particularly to the mental health of the population, given it is a potential source of anxiety, phobia, panic, depression, obsession, irritability, and COVID-19-related paranoia (Dubey et al., 2020). Social Network In this topic, social networks present twofold effects. On one hand, it is one of the main vehicles of the misinformation and inaccurate information reported. Moreover, people can be adversely influenced by what they see in social networks, which may alter risk perceptions, encourage unhealthy behaviors and reassure the non-compliance with preventative measures (Gao et al., 2020). On the other hand, as the current situation demands physical distancing, remote communication has become an indispensable resource to have social connection (Bergman et al., 2020), as well as to find inspiration on healthy habits and behaviors (Brooks et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2020). In fact, particularly in the scenario of this unprecedented crisis, social networks have been suggested to play a fundamental role in social support, tension release and
Google Sites
Report abuse