Covid-19 pandemic coupled with lockdown restrictions led to loneliness among several youngsters in absence of social interaction, which gradually developed into depression that needed clinical intervention, Dr. Siddharth Sinha, a renowned neuropsychiatrist said while talking at an online event of TEDx Kanke on Saturday.
In an interactive session, which saw participation of several hundred students, entrepreneurs, doctors and social activists from across the country, Dr. Sinha highlighted how the fear of contracting Covid-19 and the panic associated with death of loved ones wreaked havoc on the mental health of residents from different age groups and walks of life.
“It takes hardly 14 days of lack of interest in doing things that one previously enjoyed coupled with general sadness and helplessness to diagnose a person with depression,” said Dr. Sinha, adding that most of the sufferers sought help only after their mental health started disrupting their ability to perform day to day activities.
“It is best to approach doctors at an early stage of the symptoms, so that treatment can be provided before mild to moderate depression turns into major depressive episodes, which can also prove to be life threatening,” he said.
The TEDx event on Saturday aimed at providing an insight on mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic and help people cope with the stress associated with the disease and its effect on the day-to-day life.
“Financial problems were among the major reasons for mental health disorders in young adults as businesses were affected during the lockdown and many people lost their jobs,” said Dr. Sinha, a senior neuropsychiatrist at Ranchi Institute of Neuro Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS), Ranchi.
The rural masses, he said, were also affected by the pandemic but did not have access to doctors during the period. Dr. Sinha, who treated more than 150 such patients from rural Jharkhand during the pandemic, said that psychotic episodes in rural residents reached an all-time-high during the pandemic.
Dr. Sinha also claimed that substance abuse increased among the youth, especially college students, during the pandemic and had a detrimental effect on their mental health.
“College students started relying on substances such as marijuana and LSD to overcome their loneliness and boredom. The use of drugs made the condition turn bad to worse in no time,” he said.
TEDxKanke is an independent TED event organised by Rajiv Gupta, who has more than two decades of corporate experience in and outside Jharkhand.