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to focus on the infectious aspect of the pandemic, a rise has been observed in mental health disorders (Brooks et al., 2020; Holmes et al., 2020). Indeed, during this ongoing health crisis, those affected by emotional, behavioral and psychiatric disorders tend to be more numerous than those affected by COVID-19. As a matter of fact, the fear of contracting COVID-19 seems not to be as high as concerns about the psychological and social impact of the pandemic, as reported in a United Kingdom survey (Mental health Covid-19, 2020). Particular groups appear to be at higher risk for this kind of mental health impact, including frontline healthcare workers, the elderly, children, college students, the LGBTQ+ community, homeless individuals and those in economic vulnerability, rural community, foreigners and psychiatric patients (Holmes et al., 2020; Khan et al., 2020; Salerno et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2020). Indeed, the emotional stress linked to the current scenario may potentially aggravate previous psychiatric conditions or may precipitate its symptomatology (Yao et al., 2020). A critical aspect of this context is that, due to physical distancing, many elective appointments have been canceled and mental health support systems have been suspended, even though remote assistance is rapidly increasing (Holmes et al., 2020). This review aims to discuss the impact of COVID-19 for the mental health of the overall world population, in addition to its causes and ramifications. The topics of greater relevance in the scientific literature so far have been included, most of which concern not only the healthcare professionals and authorities, but the entire population as well. Furthermore, some measures that ought to be taken to minimize the emotional burden of the pandemic were debated. Methods Data were obtained independently by six authors, who carried out a comprehensive and non-systematic search in the PubMed, Cochrane, Scopus, SciELO, and Google Scholar databases. Search strategies included terms as: “COVID-19,” “SARS-CoV-2,” “anxiety,” “depression,” “psychiatric disorders,” “social isolation”, “behavior changes”, “psychiatric patients”, “mental health”, “suicide”, “media”, “racism”, “healthcare workers,” “elderly,” “domestic violence,” “sleep,” “LGBT community,” “homeless,” “foreigners,” “rural community,” “informal settlements.” The search was conducted between May 14th and May 26th. This article was subsequently updated between May 26th and September 5th. The search emphasized recent articles, published case series, consensus statements, guidelines, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and prospective cohort studies, critically reviewed and selected by the authors. Research has also been made in informative official website public domains and in the references contained in the previously data collected. Restricting Measures Due to the Pandemic Terminology on Quarantine, Social Isolation, and Social DistancingIn the context of COVID-19 pandemic, the terms “social distancing,” “social isolation,” and “quarantine” have been used mostly as synonyms in the media, in communication with the public and even in scientific papers (Brooks et al., 2020). However, there are great differences between these designations, even though there is not always an agreement on the terminology. “Quarantine” refers to extreme restrictions of movement of those exposed or potentially contaminated by the virus, in order to minimize the spread of the
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