For many people the pandemic has been a great deal of a mental stress as the fear of sufferings and death often continue to haunt them.
Many survivors simply avoid recalling the ordeals of the lonely suffocating situation which often triggers panic attacks.
The mental stress is said to be so serious and painful that thousands of such victims have been diagnosed with severe mental trauma or face Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
According to reports, over 14 thousand people have committed suicide between March last year and February last. The numbers are significantly higher than the deaths caused by Covid-19 in this time period, proving the mental vulnerability of the people of the country.
The pandemic has caused stress on many different levels including social, financial, economic etc, besides the fear of death itself. For many who have been victims of the viral infection and survived, the physical pain may have ended but it left a lasting effect on them mentally.
The virus, unlike some other viruses, is not limited to being a one-time experience. People can be infected by the virus again even after recovering. Survivors of the virus go through many anxious moments due to their experiences.
They lose sleep and the will to function. Many feel themselves to be cursed and are subjected to characteristic changes due to isolation and the constant fear of death for themselves and the people around them.
Anika Bushra, a survivor of Covid who recently lost her father to the virus and is struggling with her mother because of it, told Bangladesh Post that it has been about a month and a half since she tested negative but she can still feel the damage Covid had left on her physiologically and mentally.
“Whenever someone is feeling a little unwell in the house, it is all panic for me. My home is flooded with X-Ray and CT-scan folders, piles of daily reports dating back to February, heaps of medicines stocked just in case we run out of anything. There are desks filled with nebulisers and other machines to measure blood pressure, etc and multiple oxygen cylinders. Home feels like a storage room of a pharmacy and it is quite suffocating for me”, she added.
While talking to this correspondent, Tashfia Zaman, one of the first few victims of Covid-19 from April last year, said that she still goes through the anxiety and trauma due to the flashbacks of her experiences last year and attends therapy for her condition.
“I was a high-risk patient and so I had to be kept in isolation. I was all alone in probably an entire floor of the hospital. I had extreme breathing problems but there was usually no one around. Even today, when I experience even a minor breathing problem, it takes me back to that memory causing high level of anxiety and panic attacks,” she said.
She further added that she had seen quite a few deaths during her time in the hospital and that had left a scar in her till date. Whenever she hears the news of any death through Covid, she cannot bear to listen to the details as it triggers panic. She shared that watching some of her neighbouring people in the hospital being taken away lifelessly last year, still gives her sleepless nights.
Veteran psychiatrist, Dr Anwara Begum told Bangladesh post that it is worse for people who already suffer from conditions such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She said that there are conditions people already suffer from and the pandemic or the lockdown acted as a major trigger.
Similar scenes were seen last year around this time and are now being seen again with the virus at its peak in the country. People suffer from stressful cautiousness and panic at the smallest sight of a symptom.
In a detailed discussion with Bangladesh Post, Faysal Ahmed Rafi, a psychologist and councilor of Bdlisteners, said that they have witnessed symptoms of psychological disorder in many people with no such records in their past. The pandemic and the experience with the virus had turned them psychologically vulnerable.
He said, “Many of the survivors feel they were the unlucky ones to have contracted the virus and tend to develop a negative mentality. The fear of falling victim to the virus again is quite constant within them. Sleeplessness is quite common.”
He continued that due to the lockdown and the on and off restrictions, people are less occupied and have limited distractions. As part of their treatment besides the medication, we suggest the family members of such people to be more empathetic and keep them calm.
“Our methods involve calming down the stressed and making sure that the person understands what he or she has gone through and accept it. That is the only way a person can move on,” he said.
The pandemic has provided many reasons to be stressed for the people around the globe. However, people who have survived the virus continue to suffer from the traumatic experience they had, added with the general fear of facing it again, alongside the crumbling environment around them.