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The Lockdown is not a cure but a critical strategy to prevent the geographical spread of COVID-19.

While pandemics at this level involves actual life threatening situations for individual's or significant others in one's immediate circle, it envisages a marked disruption in routine life. Even after the pandemic has been contained and will come to pass; it's aftermath will leave a trailblazer which demands planning and implementation of a post pandemic reconstruction of society with potentially traumatic experiences varying in intensity, multiplicity and duration.

Degree of Trauma

It would do well for each one of us to realise that the pandemic is "potentially traumatic", since not everyone will experience COVID -19 as a traumatic event in their lives. Yet, there will be those who may develop post pandemic stress reactions, depression and related dysfunction and pathological reactions while still other exhibit healthy reactions to the same set of circumstances.

"Psychological reactions to the pandemic can be distilled into four distinct prototypical patterns, namely, Resilience, Recovery, Chronic and Delayed patterns which may vary in intensity, multiplicity, and duration. Resilient individual have an ability to bounce back from adversity and experience modest or little disruption in normal functioning and are able to maintain a relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological functioning even after enduring the pandemic. Recovery pattern is characterised by relatively rapid reduction in symptoms and return to normal functioning whereas chronic pattern is characterised by symptoms and dysfunction of a long duration," says Pune-based military psychologist Lt Col Dr Samir Rawat.

Challenges at the Individual and Community Levels

From a psychological perspective, post pandemic reconstruction would entail catering to the problems, concerns and needs of those adversely impacted by the COVID -19 with stress symptoms typically characterised by individual's experiencing an overwhelming trauma of the pandemic (for example, recurring nightmares/ breaking into a cold sweat, flashback of stressful events, increasing irritability, low frustration tolerance or emotional numbing).

It could also manifest in depressive symptoms which may result in lack of interest or diminished pleasure in activities and things which you earlier liked to do, feelings of worthlessness or even survivor guilt in case of a loss of a loved one due to COVID-19, fleeting thoughts of death and suicidal ideation. Physical symptoms, on the other hand could be a decrease in appetite, weight and sleep problems, inability to focus and lack of concentration.

Undoubtedly, the pandemic will cause a financial loss of varying magnitude to many, especially the marginalised and economically disadvantaged strata of daily wage earners; it will also lead to loss of jobs (already beginning to show), homelessness, occupational difficulties and new challenges in interpersonal relations at work and on the home front, besides physical health problems and psychological barriers with new norms of accepted social behaviour (social distancing, handshakes, an obsession for cleanliness to name a few).

Emotional battles

Many factors may influence whether individuals come out stronger and more resilient or surrender to the pandemic. Emotion Regulation is one such long term critical factor that can play an important role in contributing to varying degrees of adaptation with negative or positive outcomes. While we know that primary emotions are fear, anger, disgust, joy, anticipation, acceptance, sadness and surprise, other basic emotions include wonder, love, desire, joy, hatred, sadness, attachment, disgust, rage and even expectancy .

To be able to regulate these emotions and avoid negativity , especially on social media platforms is likely to increase efforts in emotion regulation which involves initiating, increasing or maintaining an emotional response.

This means by regulating or on the other hand by stopping, decreasing or avoiding an emotional response, that is, by down-regulating, depending on the individual's objectives and goals or his /her ability to regulate emotions in the valued and given direction.

"One of the best ways to regulate emotions is through cognitive restructuring wherein we change the way we think; after all it is not the event but the interpretation of the event which is perceived as stressful and finding meaning promotes resilience and reduces risk and vulnerability to stress," advises Dr Rawat.

Adding, "Clearly, we need to have a psychological plan to prevent, mitigate and minimise negative outcomes by post pandemic reconstruction of society at an individual and community level all over the country; this has to be integrated by all leaders across verticals in diverse domains."

Clinician-scientists have found that Irish patients admitted to hospital with severe coronavirus (COVID-19) infection are experiencing abnormal blood clotting that contributes to death in some patients.

The research team from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland found that abnormal blood clotting occurs in Irish patients with severe COVID-19 infection, causing micro-clots within the lungs.

According to the study, they also found that Irish patients with higher levels of blood clotting activity had a significantly worse prognosis and were more likely to require ICU admission.

"Our novel findings demonstrate that COVID-19 is associated with a unique type of blood clotting disorder that is primarily focussed within the lungs and which undoubtedly contributes to the high levels of mortality being seen in patients with COVID-19," said Professor James O'Donnell from St James's Hospital in Ireland.

In addition to pneumonia affecting the small air sacs within the lungs, the research team has also hundreds of small blood clots throughout the lungs.

This scenario is not seen with other types of lung infection and explains why blood oxygen levels fall dramatically in severe COVID-19 infection, the study, published in the British Journal of Haematology said.

"Understanding how these micro-clots are being formed within the lung is critical so that we can develop more effective treatments for our patients, particularly those in high-risk groups," O'Donnell said.

"Further studies will be required to investigate whether different blood-thinning treatments may have a role in selected high-risk patients in order to reduce the risk of clot formation," Professor O'Donnell added.

According to the study, emerging evidence also shows that the abnormal blood-clotting problem in COVID-19 results in a significantly increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

As of Friday morning, the cases increased to 20,612 cases in Ireland, with 1,232 deaths so far, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

Colorado, Jul 24: A new study has found that physical stress in one's job may be associated with faster brain ageing and poorer memory.

Aga Burzynska, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, and her research team connected occupational survey responses with brain-imaging data from 99 cognitively normal older adults, age 60 to 79. They found that those who reported high levels of physical stress in their most recent job had smaller volumes in the hippocampus and performed poorer on memory tasks. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is critical for memory and is affected in both normal ageing and in dementia.

Their findings were published this summer in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience under the research topic 'Work and Brain Health Across the Lifespan.'

"We know that stress can accelerate physical ageing and is the risk factor for many chronic illnesses," Burzynska said. "But this is the first evidence that occupational stress can accelerate brain and cognitive ageing."

She added that it is important to understand how occupational exposures affect the ageing of our brains.

"An average American worker spends more than eight hours at work per weekday, and most people remain in the workforce for over 40 years," Burzynska said. "By pure volume, occupational exposures outweigh the time we spend on leisure social, cognitive and physical activities, which protect our ageing minds and brains."

Physical demands at work

Burzynska explained that the association between "physical stress" and brain/memory were driven by physical demands at work. These included excessive reaching, or lifting boxes onto shelves, not necessarily aerobic activity. This is important because earlier work by Burzynska and her colleagues showed that leisure aerobic exercise is beneficial for brain health and cognition, from children to very old adults. Therefore, the researchers controlled for the effects of leisure physical activity and exercise.

As expected, leisure physical activity was associated with greater hippocampal volume, but the negative association with physical demands at work persisted.

"This finding suggests that physical demands at work may have parallel yet opposing associations with brain health," Burzynska explained. "Most interventions for postponing cognitive decline focus on leisure, not on your job. It's kind of unknown territory, but maybe future research can help us make some tweaks to our work environment for long-term cognitive health."

She added that the results could have important implications for society.

"Caring for people with cognitive impairment is so costly, on economic, emotional and societal levels," Burzynska said. "If we can support brain health earlier, in middle-aged workers, it could have an enormous impact."

The researchers considered and corrected for several other factors that could be related to work environment, memory and hippocampus, such as age, gender, brain size, educational level, job title, years in the occupation and general psychological stress.

One piece of the puzzle

"The research on this topic is so fragmented," Burzynska said. "One previous study linked mid-life managerial experience with greater hippocampus volume in older age. Another showed that taxi drivers had larger hippocampi than a city's bus drivers, presumably due to the need to navigate. In our study, job complexity and psychological stress at work were not related to hippocampal volume and cognition. Clearly, our study is just one piece of the puzzle, and further research is needed."

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data used for the study was collected at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign between 2011 and 2014.

CSU researchers now can collect MRI data with the new 3T scanner at the University's Translational Medicine Institute.

With this new capability, Burzynska, along with Michael Thomas and Lorann Stallones of CSU's Department of Psychology, is launching a new project, "Impact of Occupational Exposures and Hazards on Brain and Cognitive Health Among Aging Agricultural Workers," which will involve collecting MRI brain scans and identifying risk and protective factors that could help the agricultural community age successfully. The project recently obtained funding as an Emerging Issues Short-Term Project from the High Plains Intermountain Center for Agricultural Health and Safety.

The Department of Human Development and Family Studies is part of CSU's College of Health and Human Sciences.