Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Covid-19: Risk, resilience and recovery

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We could be going through psychological resilience after almost a year since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 as a pandemic and when the public across the globe went through anxiety, unknown expectations, the debate on the source of the virus and some in denial.


Many families lost their loved ones, at the same time job losses and now from the psychological perspective this is where we are – psychological resilience.


“Psychological resilience basically means being able to bounce back after any particular eventful life occurrence just like doing bad in an exam when the individual goes through anger, feeling bad, blaming the teacher and then finally getting ready to retake the exam. Psychological resilience is a condition in which one is able to take up any challenge that the life throws,” explained Dr Hamed al Sinawi, Senior Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist, Sultan Qaboos University Hospital and Chairman of Oman Alzheimer’s Society.


One of the measures that eased people’s anxiety is the transparency in numbers of Covid-19 and information on precautions to take and rules to adhere to prevent the virus, said the psychiatrist.


“If initially people had panicked, there was a change when the health advice became clearer they began to accept and follow the guidelines. The precautions to be taken such as wearing the face masks and maintaining social distancing were accepted and people wanted to join in and follow the rules. Nevertheless, families did lose their loved ones to the virus and it has been the same with jobs, which also impacted lifestyles,” he pointed out.


In between there was a bit of peace enough to celebrate and take short holidays within the country. But now caution is up again and there are restrictions on gatherings.


Whatever the situation the two groups of people who have been affected are the elderly and the children. The elderly people were shielded from the very beginning because it was believed that they could develop complications due to Covid-19. This, however, has had an impact on the senior citizens because of the disturbance to their regular routine, and was most prominent amongst Alzheimer’s patients.


“Not able to see the loved ones affected them, and the masks did not help either when it came to communications with caretakers. They also gained weight,” noted Dr Hamed, who continued his sessions online during the lockdown.


Meanwhile, children had a complete changeover in lifestyle moving on to online classes which took away from them direct interaction with teachers and classmates, added to that was the closure of parks and beaches which were all the requirements the nation had to take to prevent Covid-19.


However, people are coping up and it could be that most of them could be going through psychological resilience.


“Look at the different ways people have bounced back – there have been innovations, Omani farmers produced more crops and contributed to local food, we saw investment in technology to serve the country and produce masks and protection gears. This allowed people to get that strength compared to what we saw in the beginning symptoms such as panic shopping as seen in some countries in the region. Luckily, here in Oman we pretty much stayed normal, but there were concerns especially when it came to a stop to socialising at the same time there were worries about whether people would get the virus and what would happen to them if they did. Tensions also included the worry about surviving, hospitalisation and even having enough hospital beds and equipment.”


According to Dr Hamed, even if the virus has affected physically some people, it has affected everybody psychologically, which included loneliness as in the case of expatriates, effect of losing jobs or being unable to travel and not able to send home money and not to forget the stress graduate students who were ready to graduate but had to delay because of Covid-19.


“There were toxic talks about the vaccination that went around as conspiracy theories but now we are overcoming that because people are signing up for vaccinations,” he observed.


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