A new study has recently revealed the extent of insomnia and associated symptoms of anxiety, depression, and traumatic response among medical practitioners in China during the height of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The research, which now appears in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, highlights the effects of the pandemic not only on people’s physical health, but also on their mental health.
The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 has put severe pressure on health systems around the world. Understandably, there has been much emphasis on the effect of the pandemic on the health of the population, as well as the consequences of the potential loss of life from overwhelmed public health systems.
The effects on frontline medical practitioners have also been severe. Healthcare workers are one of the groups at greater risk of infection. However, the negative psychological effects of working on the frontline of the pandemic have also been significant.
Dr Bin Zhang, the corresponding author of the article, and his colleagues describe the extremely difficult conditions that healthcare workers experienced during the height of the outbreak in China.
“After brief training,” they write, “medical staff were incorporated into the frontline battle against Covid-19. Additionally, it was not possible to set up isolation rooms consisting of an anteroom and clean zone because of insufficient equipment once the hospital rapidly became a designated Covid-19 center.”
“Medical staff must be equipped with full-body protective equipment under negative pressure for more than 12 [hours], including double-layer protective equipment, double-face masks, double-layer gloves, isolation caps, foot covers, and protective glasses.”
TARGETED LIFESTYLE CHANGES COULD DELAY MEMORY LOSS: Everyone ages, but no two people will age in the same way. Some people will remain cognitively alert as they age, while others will display dramatic memory loss.
Experts do not know precisely why this occurs, but new research suggests it relates to a genetic variation in so-called nutrient-sensing pathways. These are molecular interactions that depend on the levels of nutrients people consume. The study, published in Communications Biology, indicates that lifestyle changes based on an individual’s genetic makeup could help to delay memory loss. The study focused on neural stem cells (NSCs). These are a group of cells located in the hippocampus, which is a centre for memory in the brain.
