Sunday, December 20, 2020

Mental Health of India’s Corona Warriors: An often overlooked aspect of the pandemic

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Raya Tripathi

Article Title

Mental Health of India’s Corona Warriors: An often overlooked aspect of the pandemic

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Global Views 360

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December 20, 2020

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Mental Health Representative Image

Mental Health Representative Image | Source: rawpixel.com via Freepik

It’s been almost a year since the Covid 19 first started spreading in Wuhan, China and spread to all parts of the world, turning into a pandemic. This has brought along with it an unusual situation for everyone around the world—people were locked up inside their homes and everything was shut. Only the doctors,  healthcare workers and other emergency service workers were working long hours, often going without proper sleep and food. Working day and night, like robots, is not natural for human beings, and therefore, has its consequences.

Mental health in India

Mental health of people is deteriorating globally, and the worst impact can be seen for the corona warriors.

Many people in India do not care about mental health and rubbish it off due to lack of awareness about the problem. They don’t consider it as a health problem just like any other illness, these are not much discussions or consultations with the experts, even when there is a clear sign of a person suffering from it. This state of affir is one of the major contributing factor for the high suicide rates in India.

The taboo associated with discussing mental health, dissuades the person who is suffering or their family members to discuss and take the help from experts as they fear that any revelation of mental health issues can tarnish their image in the society. There are still instances that people seeking professional help are labelled mentally weak or simply ‘‘mad’. Due to superstition still persisting in society, many believe mentally ill people to be 'possessed' by some evil spirit. This forces a large number of people to visit some Godmen or Exorcists to get it cured, rather than going to a professional.

This pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has exacerbated the mental stress and resulted in a spike in the instances of anxiety and depression among the population all over the world. The healthcare workers, fighting the pandemic in the frontline as Corona Warrier, are more exposed to the dangers associated with it. Although the frontline healthcare workers are now sufficiently protected from the direct impact of the virus, their deteriorating mental health still remains an unforeseen challenge.

What are the problems faced by corona warriors in India?

Healthcare workers are responding quickly and moving in vans in many places for testing the Covid patients. They are working hard to take care of everything from regular check- up to specialised testing for the ailing people. But, what about the physical and mental health of these health workers who are serving the patients with highly contagious disease, day and night, despite feeling homesick and tired.According to a report in Indian express, Dr. Kinjal Nadia, a doctor in Gujarat's Jamnagar, said, “Spending eight hours in a PPE suit is the toughest thing to do. One can’t even drink a glass of water though has to speak loudly to be heard by patients and assistants”.

There are incidents of suicide among thejunior doctors from AIIMS Delhi and RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata, which in itself describe the mental status of doctors and healthcare workers. Furthermore, around 80% of the doctors, especially younger ones, are at a very high risk of burning out due to constant pressure by the people, press and the administration to manage the extraordinary workload of testing, diagnosing, treating and curing  the patients, successfully.

In order to manage the huge influx of patients, at many places, doctors and healthcare workers are being hired temporarily, which acts as a catalyst for stress which they are already facing. This has also led to protests by the healthcare workers, including the nurses of AIIMS Patna, for making their employment permanent.

There had been a lack of PPE kits and proper protection against the virus for the healthcare professionals in many places, which increased the danger of exposing them to the virus and putting their lives in danger. There have been many incidents narrated by the doctors and the patients about dirty floors and filthy bathrooms in government hospitals of India.

A report on Firstpost mentioned about the usage of unhygienic food and dirty bed-sheets at government-run Kasturba hospital in Mumbai. An online petition against this situation had garnered over 100,000 signatures.

A news article from the New Indian Express tells that in Bengaluru, Dr. Manohar KN, with his colleagues, conducted a survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental well being of the healthcare workers. Over two thousand doctors, nurses and technical staff, aged between 20 and 65 years, participated in this survey, which was conducted in 26 states and union territories of India. This incidentally was the largest survey of its kind in the world.

The most shocking finding of the survey was that the healthcare workers were mostly in a sad mood, and the most optimistic ones (around 70%) were also becoming pessimistic. Even after wearing heavy PPE kits, masks, gloves, face shields all day long, which in itself is exhausting, they were constantly afraid of catching the virus.

Even the families of these corona warriors are worried. Many of them have succumbed to the coronavirus while saving people from it. They don’t get to meet their families while working during the pandemic, and sometimes end up never meeting again.

Are there any mental health services in India?

India, at the moment doesn’t have adequate infrastructure to diagnose and treat the people suffering with mental health issues. also there are not enough organisations or programs which can help in raising the awareness and mitigating misinformation regarding mental health issues. The availability of psychologists in India is grossly inadequate to take care of the mental health of a population of more than 130 crores.

However, the wide adoption of online meetings during the pandemic has come as a big boost to increasing the reach of online psychological counselling through video conferencing. This has enabled the patients to consult the doctors and counsellors  remotely through video links, which reduced the chances of spreading the virus. But not everyone has access to such facilities.

What is the government doing about it?

The government issued a guide in April 2020 for general medical and specialised mental health care settings to be followed during Covid 19 pandemic and also launched a helpline for mental health issues during lockdown. However, when it comes to regular mental health care, India is behind most of the countries. If a country does not even have basic health care for each and every of its citizens, how can it provide them with ‘world class' mental health services?

According to WHO, India ranks second among countries with the greatest burden of disease for mental and behavioral disorders. Most of the mental health disorders go unreported, as people never let others know about it, because in India, this becomes a matter of shame and losing their pride.

Clearly, the healthcare professionals seem tough from the outside, and fight bravely, but on the inside, they’re struggling with their own issues which need to be attended.

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February 4, 2021 4:40 PM

Black Lives Matter: Will it lead to reform of Police Forces in the USA?

The spontaneous eruption of the “Black Lives Matter” protest after the unfortunate death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has once again put the spotlight on the operational methodology of the police department at different cities around the USA. There is a chorus across the country, more so in the Democratic Party strongholds to do fundamental reorganization of the police force by focussing on community policing. Some of the extreme and radical activists have gone so far to demand “defund the police” and re-distribute its budget to marginalized communities, municipal corporations and necessity institutions.

“There is no magic switch to turn off and boom there’s no police department,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College. She released a book named ‘The End of Policing’. The book has become a manifesto for protests and police-reform advocates. The defund development calls for diminishing networks' dependence on police for various administrative problems like, observing the homeless, settling household quarrels, restraining understudies, reacting to upheavals by individuals with mental illness, paring down violence in neighbourhoods, and proportional reaction to minor inconveniences like somebody attempting to pass a fake $20, the allegation that set off the police call that resulted in Floyd's demise. The funds saved by reducing the workload of police could be utilised by social and community workers to resolve street feuds. “When we talk about de-funding the police, what we're saying is invest in the resources that our communities need,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC News.

There are cities which have approached this reform in a positive manner. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to shift the money from NYPD budget to youth recreational programs. A whopping $150 million is being pulled out of the LAPD by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. This money is proposed to be invested in healthcare systems and build peace centres. Similarly Portland and Oregon have consented to pull police from state funded schools. A few Minneapolis organizations, including the government funded school region, the University of Minnesota and the Park and Recreation Board, have moved to diminish or end their agreements with city police.

Dallas has earlier experienced the positive results of diverting emergency mental health calls, not only on hospitals but also police to non-police establishment when in 2018 RIGHT Care  was provided $3 million funding to look after these issues. Since the program started, ambulances and emergency vehicle calls for individuals encountering emotional wellness inconveniences have declined in the south-local region of Dallas where the program works, which has opened up officials to manage different calls, authorities said. This transition was also done after the outcry over the shooting of a schizophrenic man holding a screwdriver in 2014 and subsequent defence of police personnel by the police boss David Brown.

Law enforcement officials and conservative activists believe that de-funding police would lead to an upsurge in criminal activities. President Donald Trump has started making this as a key plank of his re-election campaign while the Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, also came out against de-funding police.

It is therefore too early to predict whether the current phase of “Black Lives Movement” after the death of George Floyd will be successful in bringing some substantial reform in the working of police forces across the cities of the US or the momentum will be lost with some incremental tweaking here and there.  

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