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NHS Value
"We will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together. We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.”
– Boris...
April 17, 2020, 2:38 pm
Science & Psychology of the Coronavirus Crisis
There is rightly criticism of the pseudoscience of the behaviourism the government promotes in tandem with the expertise of epidemiologists and virologists. But there is one psychological principle that helps explain the misery that the crisis...
April 17, 2020, 2:38 pm
Covid19 Outbreak – Psychological Issues around Social Isolation
Many nations are undergoing some form of “lock-down”, so some anxiety is normal. Borwin Bandelow, from Gottingen in Germany, who has conducted a study on fear, said humans developed into social creatures to survive, so isolation was...
April 17, 2020, 2:38 pm
Many nations are undergoing some form of “lock-down”, so some anxiety is normal. Borwin Bandelow, from Gottingen in Germany, who has conducted a study on fear, said humans developed into social creatures to survive, so isolation was an unnatural state. “In the past we lived in tribes, and those who broke away from those tribes had very little chance.”
That meant isolation “can cause some to develop pathological angst conditions”, he said. But overall, the long-term negative effects of physical isolation should be considerably eased by knowing everyone is experiencing them. “As soon as an exceptional situation affects many people, the effect is less strong … During the war in Yugoslavia, patients who habitually suffered panic attacks were no more scared than the next person. In fact, the number of attacks decreased, because they were suddenly faced with other, very concrete things they had to fear.”
French psychologist Aurelia Schneider echoes the importance of realising the pain is shared. If everyone will respond differently, we all “have to be able to make sense of the situation”, she said.” This will give us psychological protection. It’s about knowing this isn’t an individual and isolated suffering, but a collective suffering.”
In Spain, however, clinical psychologist Albert Soler warned against the dangers of trying to stay falsely upbeat. “When things are bad, being pressured to be positive can be positively harmful,” he said.
Der Spiegel, March 2020.