Age of anxiety: Mental health is the next looming crisis in Covid-19 times

It needs swift, sensible attention, writes Nikita Puri

It’s been weeks since he returned to India, but Suhel Mehta (name changed), still gets anxious when he thinks about his last few days in Italy. Mehta was in Lombardy, at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. He locked himself up, choosing to virtually starve than step out of his room and risk infection.

He flew out as soon as he could, abandoning the work he had travelled for. 

“It had become so bad, he had begun to feel that just breathing would make him ill,” says Debanjan Banerjee, a psychiatrist at Bengaluru’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences