The occurrence of the Covid-19 outbreak or pandemic that demands a change in behavior in the community, has the potential to cause serious psychological disorders, and threaten people's productivity. Dean of Faculty of Psychology Undip, Dian Ratna Sawitri, S.Psi., M.Si., Ph.D., said the potential for psychological disorders needs special attention.
According to her, pandemic-related behavior changes are generally divided into three. "There are behavioral changes called protective behavior, preparedness behavior, and perverse behavior. The three behavior changes each have implications that could lead to psychological disorders," she said, Friday (11/12/2020).
As a positive of Covid-19 in Indonesia until Thursday (12/10/2020) reached 598,033 cases, and the number of infected people in the world as many as 69 million people, with a mortality rate of 1.5 million more prompting the World Health Organization, WHO announced an international public health emergency. Consequently, social restrictions such as school and university activities changed to study from home, limited office activities made the emergence of work from home. Also, the policy of closing entertainment and tourism venues has an effect on soaring unemployment due to termination of employment.
At first, Sawitri said, people can accept the restrictions, be patient, and hope that the situation will recover soon. However, when the outbreak situation becomes prolonged, the community is agitated until a variety of psychological disorders appear that can be grouped into three patterns.
The first group, protective behavior, is the actions taken by individuals to meet health rules in order to stop the spread of the disease. Protective behavior includes personal hygiene and social distancing. Personal hygiene is manifested in the form of actions such as using masks, washing hands, avoiding eating outdoors, spraying disinfectants, ensuring the adequacy of indoor air ventilation. While social distancing is done by keeping a distance to inhibit the spread of the virus, avoiding crowds, and delaying travel.
In certain contexts, social distancing is also manifested in the act of conducting self-quarantine when it realizes that it interacts with specs and/or parties infected with Covid-19 or because it has just traveled far using public transportation.
Restrictions on social relations and quarantine, according to Sawitri, can lead to reduced physical activity, the appearance of feelings of sadness, isolation, boredom, and loneliness. The condition, he said citing Safai and Sganga, opens up opportunities for the increased prevalence of depression, alcohol, and drug consumption, internet addiction or addiction, and domestic violence.
She said that adjustments to work such as learning new things and dealing with rapid, frequent, and drastic biases have serious implications. The form can be a decrease in job satisfaction, even increased burnout that is a condition of physical, mental, and emotional fatigue experienced by a person due to excessive and prolonged stress.
The application of work from home is also not a simple thing. Adjustments to the situation and occupants of the house are required. Especially for those who have school-age children, mentoring children who are facing new learning situations while doing work from home at the same time is not uncommon to make over-exhausted (high) and depressed.
The second behavior change, preparedness behavior, is behavior aimed at ensuring the availability of resources needed by individuals to be able to perform appropriate responses in order to inhibit and stop the spread of the virus. For example, looking for relevant information about the distribution of cases, the number of infected people, government interventions, buying hand sanitizers, masks, face shields, and daily needs.
Be reminded, finding information about pandemics sometimes opens up opportunities for confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety. The reaction becomes serious in individuals who have a squeeze personality, especially those who have had anxiety-related psychological disorders such as fear of being infected with the virus, fear of contact with objects that are suspected to transmit the virus, fear of strangers. Compulsive behaviors such as excessive hand washing, always cleaning things to be touched and spraying disinfectants despite ordinary conditions.
The third behavioral change called perverse behavior is a behavior that is different from what is considered normal by the public, such as avoiding hospital visits and obsessing over buying anti-viral drugs themselves. The literature study conducted by Usher et al (2020) gives an idea, although these three behavioral changes are responses that contribute to inhibiting the spread of coronavirus, all three are positively correlated with increased anxiety, heightened anxiety, and more intense stress experienced by individuals.
The Dean of the Faculty of Psychology Undip suggested that there be special treatment for changes in behavior and social conditions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is necessary to mitigate the influence of pandemic on people's mental health.
Source: www.undip.ac.id
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