Pune: Healthy adults jittery about coronavirus resort to medication

PUNE: A 42-year-old senior engineer at a private firm has been coughing for about a week and has seen a physician twice in this time period. The doctors have prescribed him a cough syrup and tablets, but the engineer is jittery.
His family said he has been constantly under the impression and fear that he has developed Covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. Eventually, on the doctor's recommendation, the engineer was taken to a psychiatrist and the engineer has been prescribed with some medicines to get over his anxiety.

Psychiatrists in the city are seeing patients on a regular basis some of low risk and some with high risk of anxiety ever since the coronavirus cases have cropped up in the country.
They are being consulted increasingly by healthy people presenting extreme phobia symptoms for coronavirus since a couple of weeks. Psychiatrists said there was an increase in the number of people visiting them with severe anxiety.
Doctors said many were healthy adults, reluctant to leave the house despite taking adequate precautions and maintaining personal hygiene. They are having panic attacks.
Psychiatrist Nikhil Mankar said, “Since one month there have been few cases who are apprehensive about the medical treatment given by their physician. In fact, they are visiting their doctors at least twice or thrice and despite getting a re-assurance that they were asymptomatic to the coronavirus, they are under its fear.”
Mankar said the patients are being told scientifically and logically about their condition . Many who didn’t have a travel history or contact history, are shown data of mortality as against serious diseases like tuberculosis among others.
Sagar Mundada, another psychiatrist, said, “It is amazing the level of fear coronavirus has caused. I have seen two patients who had extreme phobia symptoms for coronavirus even though they are very healthy. They have stopped leaving their houses. The severity of anxiety is frightening.”
Mundada said healthy adults are not even leaving the house even with adequate precautions of personal hygiene. “They are having panic attacks just knowing about coronavirus or after seeing someone wearing a mask. We are treating such patients with anxiety disorders, giving psychotherapy treatment and some medication.”
Another psychiatrist Shweta Mahajan said she had a patient on Monday who was given medicines for a runny nose by his physician.
“However, on reading about and listening to the outbreak of coronavirus, the patient constantly told his wife that he could have developed it and she should take him to the government hospital. So, the wife insisted that they should see their previous physician and take an opinion. The physician reassured the husband that he would be fine, but it did not work. Since Monday, this patient stepped out only to see the physician despite being a working professional,” Mahajan said.
According to WHO, older adults, especially those in isolation and those with cognitive decline or dementia, may become more anxious, angry, stressed, agitated, and withdrawn during the outbreak or while in quarantine.