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Abstract
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COVID-19 was declared as pandemic on March 11, 2020, by the World Health Organization, and all countries had been subjected to high alert due to its rising infection rate and mortality rate. Considering the risk of rapid spread, which can overwhelm the health-care services, most of the countries entered into a "Lockdown" mode which basically means preventing public from moving from one area to the other, mostly practiced to protect people in a locality/area.
Complete lockdown further means that persons should stay where they are currently and no entry/exit movements would be allowed further. This strategy had been adopted as an emergency measure to tackle the growing number of cases in the community along with the principles of social distancing. In this scenario, only essential services such as hospitals, police stations, fire stations, petrol pumps, and grocery stores are allowed to be opened for limited time of the day with scheduled visits by the public. This "Lockdown" strategy was adopted by India on March 25, 2020, when the Prime Minister of India declared "Lockdown" mode in the whole country starting from the midnight of March 25, 2020, for the next 21 days with assurance that the basic needs of the general public will be taken care of.[1]
With potential benefits to the public to curb or tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the "Lockdown" might prove to be a beneficial strategy; however, there can be many negative psychological consequences of sudden lockdown. Apart from having range of possible psychological issues such as anger, frustration, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, irritability, insomnia, fear/apprehension, having a prevailing sense of being imprisoned in one's own house or "being in-house arrest," etc., the lockdown has created a major crisis for people with substance dependence. As the liquor shops and local breweries were shut down by the government, it has led to the lack of availability of alcohol to many of the persons dependent on the same. Many patients are experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Similar problems are also expected to occur in subjects dependent on other illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis. Some of the newspaper reports from the Western countries suggest rise in relapses and problems with drug recovery. ("Coronavirus is causing a rise in drug and alcohol relapses," n.d.; "How the coronavirus is hurting drug and alcohol recovery," n.d.). In this case report, we present the case of a 60-year-old male who presented to our emergency services with a suicide attempt due to alcohol-related withdrawal subsequent to "lockdown."
A 60-year-old farmer was brought to emergency after attempting suicide by hanging himself. He had no past history of any other psychiatric disorder or any family history of mental illness. Exploration of history revealed that he had been taking alcohol for the past 40 years, with a dependence pattern for the past 20 years, characterized by craving, tolerance, and withdrawal symptoms...
Language: en |