Anxiety and depression cases surged by over 25% due to COVID-19: WHO

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that due to the harmful influence of COVID-19 on people’s mental health, cases of anxiety and depression have grown by more than 25% worldwide. The organization stated during a scientific brief that there has been a 25.6 percent increase in the incidence of anxiety disorders all around the world.

Concerns about the potential for mental health disorders to worsen drove 90 percent of countries surveyed to include mental health and psychosocial assistance in their COVID-19 response plans. But there are still significant gaps and concerns.

“The information we have now about the impact of COVID-19 on the world’s mental health is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is a wake-up call to all countries to pay more attention to mental health and do a better job of supporting their populations’ mental health.”

The number of cases with major depressive disorder increased by 27.6% in 2020.

“In terms of scale, this is a very large increase,” said Brandon Gray. He is from the WHO’s mental health and substance use section. The briefing “shows that Covid-19 has had had a large impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing,” he told AFP.

In areas where COVID-19 was a major problem, there was a significant increase in daily infection rates. Women and girls were also more impacted than men.

The worst impacted population in the pandemic are women, according to a report released earlier this month. During the pandemic’s first year depression, anxiety cases climbed by more than a quarter, as per Lancet research.

In 2020, there were 374 million cases of anxiety disorders worldwide. Nearly 76 million of them were new cases that happened due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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