Pre and post pandemic Mental health

Dr. Ranita Basu, IQ City United World School of Business, Kolkata “The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering”-once said by the famous psychologist Carl Jung. In real scenario, pandemic was such a great teacher, who taught us many sides of this suffering. Since the beginning of 2020 the entire world has witnessed the severe outbreak of Covid19 and its devastating consequences. And it’s needless to mention how everyone suffered mentally or physically; directly or indirectly because of this pandemic. Mental health usually refers to cognitive, behavioural, and emotional well-being. It is all about how people think, feel, and behave. Looking after mental health can preserve a person’s ability to enjoy life. And doing this involves reaching a balance between life activities, responsibilities, and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. According to World Health Organization, “Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” Being mentally well means that your mind is in order and functioning in your best interest, which shows how mentally healthy you are. During this pandemic it became really hard for almost all of us to maintain this balance in life. Many people reported feelings and symptoms like, fear, anger, sadness, worry, numbness, frustration; Changes in appetite, energy, desires, and interests; Difficulty concentrating and making decisions; Difficulty sleeping or nightmares; Physical reactions, such as headaches, body pains, stomach problems, and skin rashes, worsening of chronic health problems, and mental health conditions etc. But gradually people started recovering physically and mentally, as the number of cases were decreasing worldwide. However, we learned many positive things also from this disruptive phase.  Pandemic taught us how to overcome our fear and to be patient when you actually cannot alternate the situation around you. It taught us the importance of people in our lives and also the value of relationships we get or make in one lifetime. Surely, we all developed different coping skills. Helping others in need and standing for humanity became the main mantra of life. Connecting with others digitally, staying positive, getting physically active, getting enough sleep became the life goals for staying positive. We strongly hope to see a world soon where we would restore the mental health condition again and the “mind will be without fear’.