Hemophobia is the fear of the sight of blood. This concept was first officially formulated by George Weinberg, a professor and psychiatrist in the USA. The name is associated with two terms - “hemo” - belonging to the blood, “phobos” - fear.
The main symptoms are:
- phobia when donating or transfusion;
- panic at the sight of wounds and scratches;
- fear of seeing violent scenes, images and films.
Phobic disorders put people, at the sight of red liquid, into a depressive state that brings hellish torment. A small drop of blood can make a person take involuntary postures and put him into a stupor. The disease is inexplicable and not understood, since there are no real reasons for its occurrence.
According to experts, blood phobia cannot be controlled and cannot be overcome due to weak willpower. Panic attacks involve reckless and stupid behavior. The patient, having reached a satisfactory state, cannot explain his behavior.
Hemophobia makes life difficult for a person and deprives him of medical procedures, such as blood transfusions, injections, surgical interventions, and going to the traumatology department. Fear constrains, and the patient does not promptly go to a medical institution for routine medical care. His inner world is filled with fear.
"Covid fog"
“I suffered from coronavirus in a mild form, the temperature did not rise above 37.8 degrees,” says 35-year-old Natalya.
— At the beginning of the disease, the sensations were similar to the symptoms of a regular ARVI. But then something began to happen to your head: you seem to live in a fog. You don’t want to think about anything, do anything. It took me more than two months to get out of this state.” 44-year-old economist Alexey, who also recovered from coronavirus relatively easily, also complains of apathy: “I plunged into cat life for two weeks. You wake up, eat a little, then fall into a stupor and fall asleep without noticing. And so around the clock. You can’t remember anything in your head, you don’t remember any important things. Then it gradually began to pass, but I didn’t have the strength to engage in any intellectual activity for a long time.”
But 49-year-old Svetlana, who was hospitalized due to bilateral pneumonia, had to face other consequences. For three months after discharge, she suffered from insomnia and anxiety, and in the short intervals when she managed to fall asleep, she suffered from nightmares. As a result, the woman had to turn to a psychiatrist for help.
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Experts drew attention to such consequences after the first wave of the pandemic. Today, according to researchers, more than a third of those who have recovered from coronavirus experience negative mental consequences to one degree or another. The range of disorders is very wide: from apathy to prolonged depression, panic attacks and memory problems. Doctors also discovered dependence: the more severe the illness, the more serious the psychological consequences.
“In general, it is very difficult to talk about any clear impact of coronavirus on the human psyche,” says Nikolai Starostin, a psychiatrist at a private St. Petersburg clinic. - For two reasons. Firstly, we still do not know exactly how the mechanism of the virus’s influence on the human mental apparatus works. There are already quite a lot of different studies, but they are still at the stage of discussion in the scientific community. We understand that this is clearly influenced by vascular damage: after all, they are the main target of the virus. But this knowledge is not yet enough to draw clear conclusions.”
Psychiatrists point out that the mental health problem associated with COVID-19 is much broader than just the effect of the virus on the human body. We can say that its effect on the human psyche begins much earlier than it enters the body.
Etiology
The current understanding of malignant tumors in society looks something like this:
- Cancer is always death.
- Cancer appears out of nowhere, it is impossible to prevent it, the fight against it is futile.
- The treatment offered by modern medicine - surgical methods, chemotherapy, radiation therapy - is always very difficult to tolerate, accompanied by unpleasant side effects and rarely leads to recovery.
- All other diseases are curable. At least they do not inevitably lead to death.
Scientific information about the achievements of modern oncology is inaccessible to the population, and even uninteresting. But on the shelves of bookstores and on the Internet, at the disposal of those interested, there are a lot of opuses on this issue. Their authors know why cancer occurs and how to treat it, thereby hinting that doctors are powerless here and cannot do anything. There is a lot of information available to patients about cancer, but little of it corresponds to current scientific understanding. As a result, people do not know basic things about cancer, and the irrationality of fear has become so widespread that a cancer patient is perceived by others almost as a leper. I personally have repeatedly encountered the misconception that cancer is contagious.
The ubiquitous advertising of “unique” preparations made from various cartilages and roots, which are supposedly capable of curing both cancer and other diseases, also contributes to the spread of cancerophobia. Its recipients subconsciously form the idea that traditional medicine is not able to cope with cancer. It is also widely believed that in fact there is a universal cure for cancer, but doctors and pharmacists, fearing a decrease in their income, hide it. The accepted approach to informing patients - hiding the diagnosis until the last minute and maintaining their hope for recovery - also contributes to worsening the atmosphere of cancerophobia in society. Thanks to him, everyone knows about thousands of deaths, but at the same time they do not know about millions of cures.
By the way, in 2005, WHO recognized that silence about cancer is harmful, and fears that medical education of the population can lead to the development of cancerophobia are unfounded.
The current state of oncology is such that it can help a small number of lucky people whose tumor was detected at an early stage. Alas, cancer often manifests itself when the game is already obviously lost, and it is impossible to cure the sick person. Therefore, the main problem of modern oncology is the timely diagnosis of tumor diseases.
Anxious expectations
Already in the first wave of the pandemic in 2021, psychiatrists drew attention to changes in the mental health of the population. Lockdowns, other coronavirus restrictions, remote work, a person constantly being at home - all this has already provoked negative psychological effects. Add to this anxious expectations - fear of becoming seriously ill, fear for loved ones, the possibility of losing a job - and here it is, a set that places a heavy burden on the human psyche.
At the same time, some researchers have started talking about the increase in suicidal and depressive feelings among completely healthy citizens in different countries of the world. Moreover, data began to appear about increasing cases of domestic violence and divorce.
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When a person gets sick, his anxious expectations intensify. The patient begins to monitor his condition, symptoms, temperature, and breathing with fear. No one wants to end up in a hospital under strict quarantine. Even more fears are caused by the possibility of developing severe complications, the use of ventilators and other procedures. Now doctors already know that the most severe psychological consequences occur precisely in patients who have undergone artificial ventilation.
Blisters, bruises, infections
Fear of needles has a large number of variations. For most people, anxiety occurs not at the moment of the injection, but while waiting for the injection in the doctor's office.
Urgency
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Many people are afraid of contracting dangerous infections and small air bubbles getting into the needle. Sometimes the very sight of needles and syringes is frightening, even if they are not intended for the patient, but are shown in films or photographs.
Some experience horror from the sensations when injecting the medicine - they literally feel how it spreads under the skin or muscles. Others fear that after the injection, bruises, bumps and long-term pain may appear.
It happens that the patient has suffered a negative personal experience - an unsuccessful injection, complications, rudeness of the medical staff. In this case, the image of a syringe is directly associated with pain.
Izvestia’s interlocutor, who suffers from trypanophobia, spoke about his dislike of needles and syringes:
- I'm just disgusted. A small sharp metal penetrates a vein, into the body... I don’t know what this is connected with, as a child I was not afraid of needles. I didn’t even think about it until I was 20–25 years old. Fortunately, the phobia does not affect anything. If you need an injection or vaccine, of course, I will agree. I’ll close my eyes, turn away and extend my hand,” shared Vladimir N.
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It is doubly difficult if a person also suffers from hemophobia - the fear of the sight of blood. For such people, the fight against syringes begins long before making an appointment with a doctor. Already in a specialist’s office, fear can become insurmountable. Patients begin to fidget, try to escape, become dizzy, and sometimes faint.
How does the virus work?
But the causes of post-Covid mental disorders are not only fears for one’s life. Here the actual factors of the disease begin to play a role. Lack of oxygen in the body also leads to poor supply to the brain. This effect can lead to a variety of consequences for the nervous system.
According to a study by Italian doctors published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 55% of patients who recovered from Covid experienced some kind of mental problems. Scientists who surveyed 402 people associate them with hormonal imbalances, which are provoked by the immune system resisting the virus. Another reason for negative mental consequences is the severe stress that the patient’s body experiences.
A subsequent study of the psyche of patients who had COVID-19 corrected the data of Italian specialists. Thus, a group of researchers from the USA and Great Britain received less pessimistic results. After a large-scale study of the medical histories of more than 230 thousand people, scientists said that only 34% of Covid survivors complained of anxiety and personality disorder within six months.
Covid as trauma
Specialists from the National Medical Research Center named after. V. M. Bekhterev believes that after COVID-19, patients experience symptoms characteristic of the so-called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
PTSD is a mental disorder that occurs after events that have a traumatic effect on the individual’s psyche. At the same time, the traumatic nature of the events that occurred is associated with a person’s feeling of helplessness, the inability to influence what is happening, and to resist danger. Characteristic symptoms of PTSD include flashbacks, nightmares, partial amnesia, emotional instability and panic attacks. These manifestations can occur not only immediately after a traumatic event, but also months and even years later.
PTSD is well known to psychiatrists - this disorder can occur after any event that traumatizes the individual’s psyche. And Covid may well be one of them.
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Why do violations occur?
COVID-19, like any other virus, affects the functioning of many body systems and affects not only the respiratory tract and lungs, but also the central nervous system. This is called neurotropism - the ability of an infection to infect cells of this system. Moreover, researchers believe that the virus multiplies inside the nerve cells of the brain.
Autopsy results show that coronavirus leads to inflammation of brain tissue. And neuroimaging techniques that show the structure and dysfunction of the brain reveal microstrokes and leukoencephalopathy, a condition that leads to demyelination when the covering of nerve cell processes is destroyed.
These organic damages lead to the person developing mental and neurological disorders, which are complications.
"Side effect"
Another factor is the side effects of medications used to treat COVID-19. For example, glucocorticosteroids (GCS) are widely used in modern anti-Covid therapy. They are often prescribed in high doses and for a fairly long period. But at the same time, GCS can cause hallucinations, delusional states, depression and even manic-depressive states and paranoia. Taking other medications used in the treatment of Covid, for example, some antiviral drugs, also has a negative impact on the psyche.
Post-Covid syndrome?
The entire diverse set of consequences in people who have survived a new coronavirus infection has already been called “post-COVID-19 syndrome.” Among its symptoms are mental disorders that are already well known to us: “fog in the head,” disorientation in space, panic attacks and cognitive disorders. However, some researchers say that mental problems in Covid survivors are not unique consequences of the new disease, but complications that cause any severe infectious disease.
So, back in 2021, an article appeared in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet, which analyzed 72 studies of the consequences of epidemics - the predecessors of COVID-19 - SARS-1 and MERS viruses. Mental disorders in those who recovered from these infections turned out to be identical: confusion, depressed mood, anxiety, memory impairment, insomnia and even delirium. Thus, we can draw a preliminary conclusion: the COVID-19 virus does not necessarily have any unique properties that affect the psyche.
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