COVID-19, Mental Health Crisis-Suicide and Addiction

COVID-19, Mental Health Crisis-Suicide and Addiction
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COVID-19, Mental Health Crisis-Suicide and Addiction
COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has caused critical health and social challenges upon its emergence. By March 2020, the pandemic had already impacted 202 countries killing 23, 495 individuals (Xiong et al., 2020). The disease spread rapidly in the world due to the inability to combat it caused by high contagious nature. The key social problem that the disease promoted is mental issues due to addiction and addictive behaviors. Individuals increasingly experience mental issues such as sleep disturbances, phobia, anxiety, and panic (Zhai et al., 2020). Besides, the lockdown orders led to different addictive behaviors due to reducing interaction and social engagement (Rajkumar, 2020). It also led to job losses and increased poverty, thus causing stress and different social problems. Therefore, COVI-19 is not any normal health problem; its social consequences outweigh the health-related consequences. It is advisable to consider social structures during the treatment or intervention plans to curb the pandemic effects. It is also necessary to focus on better strategies to restore the social impacts of the pandemic. Besides, the order to stay at home isolated individuals from the community, thus promoting loneliness and poor thoughts such as drug abuse (Lee et al., 2020). Due to restricted social activities, it is easy for different populations to engage in substance abuse due to a socially conducive environment. Besides, the addicted used individualized patterns to execute their agendas without necessarily engaging in social activities due to the conducive environment (Brodeur et al., 2022). The paper examines the addictions and addictive behaviors such as suicide caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 Pandemic and Addictions
Addiction is the major social impact of COVID-19. It is a condition whereby an individual is exposed to compulsive behavior regardless of the negative consequences that it imposes on them (Killgore et al., 2020b). It is accompanied by psychological and neurobiological factors that adversely impact individuals and limit them from successfully engaging in specific socialization patterns. Addiction is detrimental since it results in disconnectedness from society and the inability to counter social pressure. Addiction takes two major forms: behavioral change and impaired cognitive control. The two elements impose threats to the populations, thus inhibiting them from successfully participating in societal activities. Different addiction types existed from the COVI-19 pandemic.
According to CDC data, an increase to 13% of United States citizens was exposed to substance abuse (Yang & Ma, 2021). Increased overdose has also been recorded from the onset of the pandemic. Based on the ODMAP reporting system, an 18% increase in substance abuse increased globally, leading to adverse conditions (Dubey et al., 2020). A similar trend has been recorded since 2020, with more population heavily using opioid-related substances. According to Ornell et al. (2020), alcohol abuse is a major type of addiction that re...