Psychiatrists and psychologists have higher incidence of mental illness in themselves!

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Psychiatrists and psychologists treat mental issues of their patients. But what about their own mental illnesses?  Psychiatrists and psychologists are more ill mentally  Doctors   are in great stress during their training as well as career period. The workload, busy and fast life schedules, and higher expectations and competitiveness and the nature of the job itself leads to a sense of exhaustion, both physical and mental. There is a heavy burnout. Moreover, time for socialization is almost nil.  Hence, doctors are in grave risk of suffering from mental health illnesses. And in this, psychiatrists and psychologists have a higher risk and incidence of mental health issues.  It is a sad truth that psychiatrists and psychologists are more ill mentally than general public or other doctors. This has been known but not accepted and recognised sufficiently.  Also, read: Narcissist mothers are non-loving and jealous of their daughters  Studies have revealed that psychiatrists and psychologists
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Flu cases this season are lesser due to covid-19 pandemic! The complete analysis here!

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 US CDC data has revealed that with COVID-19 taking the world by storm in 2020, flu cases were low. This points to the fact that covid is far more contagious than flu and is also less forgiving. More details below!

Flu cases and the year 2020

In 2019, from 19 September to 28 December (the flu season), there were 65k cases of flu reported in the USA. However, during the same flu period in the year 2020, there were only 1016 influenza cases reported.

Thus, in 2020 when the coronavirus cases were high with massive mortality rates, flu was incidentally low in numbers. What is the reason for such low incidence and transmission of the disease?

The causes of low influenza cases in 2020

The health experts feel that the reason for the low incidence of flu cases this season of 2020 was that flu vaccination rates were high. These helped to control the flu. Besides, for covid-19 people were forced to wear face masks and follow social distancing at public places. There was also the hand-washing protocol in place. Hence these preventive measures for covid-19 spread also helped to keep flu cases low.

There was a 6-fold rise in the number of testing done in labs for influenza A and B virus. This is because along with coronavirus testing, flu testing was also simultaneously carried out. Thus one can see that despite the high rate of testing, flu cases reported were less. This flu testing lessened in the last quarter of 2020 since doctors were asking for lesser flu tests since they realized that the cases were less. CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich stated:

“The public health labs test for more surveillance purposes rather than patient care reasons and are therefore a better measure of influenza burden each season than clinical labs,”

Dr Susan Rehm, vice-chair at the Cleveland Clinic’s department of infectious diseases also feels that prior vaccinations and infections of flu also helped to keep the flu incidence low this season:

“COVID is a novel infection caused by the SARS coronavirus, and no one has any innate immunity to it. So the population is probably overall more susceptible to it than maybe to influenza.”

More flu vaccines were taken this year because people were warned that a ‘twindemic’ of flu with covid-19 may come in 2020. Covid has taught the world that respiratory virus can be extremely bad and should not be taken lightly.

Flu and covid-19 [Source: ASM]



Also, read Emotional exhaustion of covid-19 and how to avoid it? 

What does all this mean?

Public health experts are happy about the covid-19 safety measures helping in the control of flu. But covid-19 per se was still high. This implies that covid is much more contagious and fatal than flu. Dr. David Hooper, chief of the infection control unit at Massachusetts General Hospital says:

“It says that it’s more contagious and that it’s less forgiving of any lapses of these types of prevention measures,”

David feels that besides being more contagious, the spread with coronavirus was more because there are people who are shedding the virus and have no symptoms (Asymptomatic carriers). Besides those who do develop coronavirus symptoms may be shedding the virus for many days before they develop the symptoms. During this time of them shedding, they are not picked up and continue to spread the virus. This is the dangerous part of coronavirus infection from the public health point of view. Studies of models developed by CDC researchers have shown that 59% of the coronavirus transmissions were from such pre-symptomatic stages of the virus. 35% of these were from pre-symptomatic people and 24% from totally asymptomatic people. And in the case of flu, the viral shedding is only for a day before the symptoms start. Hence there are fewer chances of unknowing spread of flu virus. But Susan adds:

“Just because it’s been low so far doesn’t prove that it’s going to be low going forward, and getting vaccinated is the best thing you can do to prevent influenza. It’s not too late to get vaccinated for influenza."

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