NIMHANS director gives tips on beating COVID-19 blues

A top mental health expert has given tips on how to spend the coronavirus lockdown period productively at home and to keep concerns, tension and stress at bay.

The Director of the National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) here, B N Gangadhar, suggested spending quality time with family members, and doing things which one would otherwise want to do but did not.

"Un-clutter your house, remove garbage from your house, play some small indoor games like cards with your family members, learn to cook with your family members, do some group activities with your family members which you would have never done and wanted to do it could be exercise, it could be yoga, meditation, bhajan, you all do it together," he said.

If any member of the family is preparing for an entrance examination, which has been postponed, one can be of help by conducting mock tests for some period during daytime leveraging online resources, Gangadhar, a recipient of the Padmashri award, told PTI in an interview. "TV should be watched by all the members at specified hours (only); because you are at home, don't spend all time watching it," he said.

Some women members may have tendency to feed the family with delicious food and try out new menus but one has to be careful not to add weight during the lockdown period. "More so, not exercising, not going out, makes it all the more important to reduce your indulgence on food altogether," Gangadhar said.

There are no restrictions on people coming to their house compound, where they can do dome gardening and play shuttle with their own family members, suggested Gangadhar, a senior professor of Psychiatry. "If you follow all of these, you can keep the concerns, or tension or stress of this lockdown away, and actually use it very productively, reforming your house and family," he said.

He stressed that unlike HIV and Hepatitis B, coronavirus does not leave any lasting scar and permanent defect. People's degree of concern over coronavirus is more than that what it deserves, he said, but added,"caution that we should take in the time of crisis, should be more that what we think it deserves."

coronavirus is a "transient phenomenon" and not a permanent one, he stressed. Gangadhar, who has more than 30 years of extensive experience in the field of mental health from both clinical and academic perspectives, said there is no specific antidote medicine that is known for this disease, nor is there any vaccine that has been approved for its use.