orld pandemic threat COVID-19 mitigation is crucial

to the human life and for reducing distortion of livelihood.

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept into more than 200

countries with considerable confirmed cases and deaths

and has caused public panic and mental HEALTH stress

(Huang & Zhao, 2020). Most of the nations across the

world have implemented complete lockdown with strin-

gent social distancing measures for breaking the chain of

transmission. The current outbreak of COVID-19 is heav-

ily impacting the global health and mental health. Despite

all resources employed to counteract the spreading of the

virus, additional global strategies are needed to handle the

related mental health issues (Torales et al., 2020). This out-

break is leading to additional health problems such as

stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial,

anger and fear globally (Torales et al., 2020). To protect

people and prevent the spread, it is critical that public men-

tal health paradigms and measures are used (Ventriglio

et al., 2020).

On 30 January 2020, India reported FIRST case of

COVID-19 and the numbers have risen steadily since then,

albeit at an alarming rate in the final days of March.

Aiming to control community transmission, the world’s

largest democracy has implemented world’s largest nation-

wide lockdown since 24 March 2020 (The Lancet, 2020).

The country remains vulnerable towards COVID-19,

given the high population density, socioeconomic fabric

and overstretched health-care infrastructure.

The total lockdown was the only immediately availa-

ble, best and ideal solution to the control COVID-19 pan-

demic in India. The Indian government has responded

appropriately, adequately and quickly to the COVID-19

pandemic at multiple levels. The lockdown has helped

India in buying crucial time: time for extensive contact

tracing, time to ramp up testing and most crucially, time to

prepare our health system, increasing its health-care infra-

structure and preventing it from overwhelming, as it hap-

pened in Italy, the United States and Spain.

The lockdown is an effective STRATEGY for containing

the spread of infection. However, this is very challenging

with added difficulty for larger sections of the society. The

social distancing is very difficult for many households in

India, especially slum areas; the daily-wage earner has

to earn daily money to keep family alive, and people

with existing mental health illnesses face severe issues.

A long-time lockdown may lead to psychosocial difficul-

ties for vulnerable population and consequently lead to

stress, anxiety, frustration, boredom and depression and

even suicidal idea and attempts. The Lancet Psychiatry

(2020) ALSO highlighted the mental health needs of vulner-

able groups, including those with severe mental illness,

learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental disorders,

as well as socially excluded groups such as prisoners,

the homeless and refugees. Nevertheless, the burden of

this infection on the global mental health is currently

NEGLECTED even if it may challenge patients, general popu-

lation as well as policy makers and health organisations

and teams (Torales et al., 2020).

India’s health inequalities, flaring economic and social

disparities and distinct cultural values had made lockdown

a hard measure for the poorer sections of the society. The

nationwide lockdown has maximised economic loss and

simply debilitated the country’s large population of daily-

wage earners and migrant labourers and become an impor-

tant mental health problem. The emerging mental health

issues related to this global event may evolve into long-

lasting health problems, resulting in isolation and stigma

for vulnerable population in the country.

The extended lockdown will lead to economic hard-

ship, famine, psychosocial challenges and law and order

issues, which may in turn undermine benefit gauge by

lockdown and COVID-19 containment objectives. In

Indian settings, this may exacerbate health inequalities and

reinforce the vicious cycle between poverty and ill health.

The social and economic issues due to COVID-19 pan-

demic will result in mass unemployment, depleted social

safety nets, homelessness, increase in gender-based vio-

lence, alcoholism, hunger, loan defaults and millions slip-

ping into poverty. This post-COVID landscape will

definitely leads to an increase in mental health issues such

as chronic stress, anxiety, depression, alcohol dependence

and self-harm. Recent evidences in psychosocial sciences

also show that similar pandemics increased the prevalence.....

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