Boston University School of Public Health, professor Sandro Galea said that COVID-19 could be categorised as a traumatic event because it threatened the public’s health and safety.
“Right now, we are living through a traumatic event on a global level with worrying ramifications to people’s mental health,” Galea said.
Galea said that because COVID-19 was not a contained event such as 9/11, the effects of the virus on a person’s mental health would affect a person deeply globally. Rather than just affecting people deeply, at the epicentre. Galea said that a study in the UK found that during the pandemic there was an increase in mood disorders, as well as binging drinking and in the US, a study found symptoms of depression had increased three-fold in adults.