EssayCause and Effect Essay
The COVID-19 virus welcomed the year 2020 bearing dreadful news. It has been more than a year since the whole world started battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of 15 months, the COVID-19 virus has managed to infect over 127 million people. There was a steady rise of infected cases in 2020 and then came a surge in mid-January 2021 because of the new variants of the COVID-19 virus. After that, the number gradually dwindled down but rose once again in the month of March.
The entire world has experienced a series of quarantines and lockdowns amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. After witnessing more of an outbreak of pandemic disease, what does science have to say about the psychological effects brought by the COVID-19 pandemic? This cause and effect essay will present the psychological effects caused by the worldwide pandemic and the stressors that caused it.
People who have been infected with COVID-19 are required to be isolated, preferably in a healthcare institution where healthcare professionals can give them the aid they need, within a specific duration – which typically lasts 14 days – so that they can be observed and they can recover from the disease. During these two weeks, a person infected with COVID-19 should only come in contact with nurses and doctors that are coming to check on him.
Apart from people who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, those they have come in contact with, for instance, their family, friends, and co-workers should also undergo quarantine too in order for them to observe if they are to develop COVID-19 symptoms. During this time, those who came in contact with the COVID-19-positive individual should also get tested to make sure that they are not infectious as well.
The isolation for at least two weeks does a lot for a person’s psychological well-being. But the pandemic is obviously bigger than just a mere 14-day quarantine as it affects all of humanity – whether one is infected or not. The pandemic created not just a physical and health-related crisis, but also affected one’s mental and emotional state – which may carry on for years after the pandemic is controlled. With that, here are some of the psychological effects brought by the pandemic that has been found in studies:
Anxiety is a natural response that develops when a person is faced with a situation where he feels trapped and helpless. During the pandemic, the number of people developing and experiencing anxiety shot up because people are anxious about having another family member or loved one infected by the virus or not having enough money to sustain themselves and their families. Anxiety about being stigmatized after being infected is another source of anxiety for individuals directly suffering because of the virus.
Frustration is mostly driven by the fact that even scientists are having a hard time pinpointing an effective strategy to stop the spread of the contagious virus. People are running out of resources, millions of people have lost a loved one, infected people are being isolated from their families, workers are losing jobs, and businesses are closing. People may get frustrated about their current situation along with the situation the whole world is in. Especially if the people in authority they put their trust in is not showing significant progress on how the COVID-19 pandemic is being handled.
Two weeks of being alone in quarantine with nothing much to do can feel like a terribly long time. People who are and have been under quarantine reported that they have felt loneliness during the time when they were isolated and kept under observation in a medical facility. A person under quarantine is bound to feel lonely as everyone craves for human interaction especially when they are struggling. Apart from people in quarantine, individuals who have lost family members to the virus are also prone to feeling loneliness during this time.
Almost everyone is concerned with their employment status and financial capability. With big enterprises struggling to keep their company afloat amidst the pandemic is enough to make a person feel distressed about their own financial capability. Connected with that is the amount of financial resources they have left to sustain their family
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