Coronavirus impact on mental health: Indians are grappling with multiple forms of mental health issues that have risen exponentially with the coronavirus outbreak, says Lybrate, a leading health and wellness platform, which has witnessed over 110% rise in online patient consults around mental health conditions on its platform.
The platform witnessed over 150% jump in online consultations sought by females for issues related to mental health, while the percentage for the same grew 85% in males reaching out to doctors online.
The Lybrate platform has more than 3000 psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors from across the country. The highest jump has been witnessed from Mumbai (125%), followed by Delhi (109%), Pune (116%), Ahmedabad (97%), Chennai (86%), Bengaluru (94%) and Kolkata (74%). Among Tier 2 cities, the biggest jump in online consultations concerning mental health has been reported from Indore (97%), Lucknow (93%), Kochi (87%), Patna (85%), Bhopal (57%) and Bhubaneshwar (43%). Overall, the jump in patient consults was highest in the age group of 25-45 years.
“Mental health became a point of concern for a majority of Indians after Covid-19,” said Saurabh Arora, founder & CEO, Lybrate. “We noticed on our platform that even specialists who did not deal with the subject were being consulted about mental health issues. Given the demanding situation, we provided a basic session to doctors of other specialists with psychologists on our platform who trained them on how to better counsel those seeking help regarding mental health problems. As the questions asked were mostly generic in nature, we thought it would come handy for those doctors who want to help out during the crisis.”
The queries mainly revolved around stress, isolation, claustrophobia, being unproductive, anger, irritation, loneliness, mood swings, not being able to cope with family members around, rifts between spouses, coping mechanisms, uncertainty and helplessness.
Of late, there has been a substantial rise in queries from working people around job losses and related stress, fear and worry on resuming offices at a time when Covid-19 cases are rising in the country.
