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BBC World Service West and Central Africa

The Evidence

Factual: Science & Nature

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Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore science’s effect on our world

Claudia Hammond joins scientists and experts to explore the effect science has on the world around us

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The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence: Mental health and the pandemic

Discussion & Talk

News

Evidence

27/03/2021 GMT

Mental health and the pandemic

Coronavirus: The Evidence

BBC World Service - The Evidence, Coronavirus: The Evidence, Mental health and the pandemicSearch BBC

Mental health distress has risen around the world. How can people's suffering be eased?

The pandemic continues to cause sickness, death and curbs to everyday life. Whose mental health is hardest hit, and what can be done to help?

Year two of the pandemic, and in tandem with rising rates of illness, death, acute economic shock and restrictions on everyday life, mental health problems have risen too. 

Claudia Hammond and her panel of global experts answer listeners’ questions about the pandemic of mental illness and distress, and find out which groups have been hardest hit.

Children and young people were at low risk from the virus itself, but their lives have been upended as societies have locked down. Older people too have suffered loneliness and isolation as they have tried to keep themselves safe.

What does the evidence show about the true scale of suffering, and what can we learn from other countries about the best way to support those in real distress and bolster resilience within communities?

Claudia hears from Giulia in Brazil about her struggles with anxiety and from Mohsen in Tehran, Iran, about the techniques he is using to cope with anxiety and depression following the serious illness of himself and his family from the virus.

Her global panel of experts includes Dr Lola Kola, a mental health specialist and Assistant Director at the WHO Collaborating Centre at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, one of the authors of a major review of the mental health impacts of the pandemic in low and medium income countries published last month in Lancet Psychiatry; Andrew Steptoe, Professor of Psychology and Epidemiology at University College London in the UK, leading the UK Social Study, the world’s largest study into the mental health impact of the pandemic during the longest enforced isolation in living history; Cathy Creswell, Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford in the UK, is head of the Co-Space Study, tracking how parents and children are coping during this pandemic; and Steven Taylor is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Steven specialises in anxiety disorders, and just before the pandemic, he published a book, called The Psychology of Pandemics.

Production team: Fiona Hill, Samara Linton and Maria Simons
Editor: Deborah Cohen
Technical support: Giles Aspen and Bob Nettles

Picture: Young men wearing protective mask to Protect Against Covid-19, Credit: Visoot Uthairam/Getty Images

The Evidence: Coronavirus: The Evidence

Magazines & Reviews

Claudia Hammond is joined by experts to answer questions about the coronavirus Covid-19.

In The Evidence Claudia Hammond is joined by an expert scientific panel to answer questions from the audience on a variety of aspects of the coronavirus and Covid 19, from the impact of lockdowns and self isolation on the spread of the disease, to the question of who should be tested and the search for treatments. 
Professor Vivek Jha, Executive Director, of the George Institute for Global Health, India, talks about the situation in his country where a lockdown was announced four hours before it began.

Dr Lyndsey Broadbent, a virologist at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, explains what is now known about the biology of the virus and why it causes serious disease in some people and no symptoms in others. 
Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist from St Andrews University, discusses the issue of stigma that’s being experienced by some people who have had Covid-19. 

Claudia also hears from a psychiatrist at the University of Verona in northern Italy, which has taken the brunt of cases in the country about some of the most serious consequences for doctors and nurses, and the general population.

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