The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Schizophrenia Patients

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic affected human life globally, inducing much stress on daily living (Çakıroğlu et al. 2020). Although assessments of general mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic have been widely reported, there is not adequate research on how schizophrenia patients have been affected. According to the World Health Organization (2020), individuals with chronic diseases who do not pay attention to their personal hygiene and the rules of protection from COVID-19 have a higher risk of getting infected than the healthy individuals who observe these measures. It is well known that the risk of Covid-19 infection is raised among schizophrenia patients due to negligence on the requisite control of personal hygiene and health conditions related to smoking and diabetes ( Cohn et al., 2004; Dinan et al., 2004; Krieger et al. 2019). The cognitive impairment in this disorder which reduces the perceptions on the necessity of self protection and the awareness of the risks proposed to underlie this raised risk of COVID-19 positivity (Yao et al. 2020). These patients have difficulty in following the preventive regulations (Palomar-Ciria et al., 2020). Apart from the risk of infection, there is also the risk of pandemic related development of auditory or visual hallucinations and delusional symptoms by acute and chronic psychosis patients during and after the pandemic (Brown et al. 2020, Cowan 2020). Therefore, this survey has been organised to evaluate the reaction developed by schizophrenia patients to the pandemic conditions.