Authors: Aishwarya Nagarajan, Prateek Malhotra, Ruby Chauhan, Sumant Swain
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the general population across the world. A health crisis of such a large scale is likely to have a psychological impact of varying degrees in the general population. Objective: The aim of the study is to establish the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the general population of India. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a semi structured questionnaire containing questions regarding socio-demographic characteristics, General Health Questionnaire (12-item) and counselling seeking behaviour was disseminated in a snowball sampling technique through an online survey form. Total 405 participated in the study with a non-response rate of 1.23%. Results: It was observed that there is significant relation of sociodemographic characteristics of age, employment status and also counselling seeking behaviour on the psychological impact of the participants. 68 students experienced fair to worse psychological impact. 157 participants under the fair to worse impact deny seeking counselling. Conclusion: The pandemic of such large magnitude is bound to have a psychological impact on the population due to various factors and policymakers must take this into consideration. Keywords: Mental health, Psychological impact, GHQ-12, COVID-19, Pandemic and SARS- CoV- 2.
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