COVID-19 Pandemic and Stress: Coping with the New Normal

Abstract

COVID-19 is the new face of pandemic. Since the discovery of COVID-19 in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, it has spread all over the world and the numbers are increasing day by day. Anyone can be susceptible to this infection but children, older adults, pregnant women, and people with comorbidity are more vulnerable. The spread of coronavirus resulted in closures of schools, businesses, and public spaces worldwide and forced many communities to enact stay at home orders, causing stress to all irrespective of their age, gender, or socioeconomic status. The sudden and unexpected changes caused by the outbreak of coronavirus are overwhelming for both adults and children, causing stress and evoking negative emotions like fear, anxiety, and depression, among different populations. The aim of the paper is to ascertain how stress during this pandemic inculcates various psychological health issues like depression anxiety, OCD, panic behavior, and so on. Further, the paper is an attempt to identify different general as well as population specific coping strategies to reduce the stress level among individuals and prevent various stress-induced psychological disorders with reference to different theories and research articles.