Coping with Coronavirus: How to Stay Calm and Protect your Mental Health

. Our task today is not to teach ourselves that there is nothing to fear – clearly, there is – but rather to teach ourselves how to keep our anxiety proportionate to the risk, how to live with a certain amount of worry, and how to navigate the uncertainty that coronavirus has brought to our broader lives.

catastrophisation’, which is an irrational tendency to believe, and behave as if, a given problem is far worse than it really is.

The best approach is to tell children that there is a problem with a new illness, but that simple things like washing our hands with greater care can help everyone to stay well. Children need reassurance that they are safe. Like adults, they derive great comfort from structure in their day. Children also imitate their parents, so be sure to limit your media consumption, take plenty of exercise and try to maintain the rhythms of daily life as best as possible.

DON’T FALL INTO UNHELPFUL THINKING HABITS (AUDIT YOUR THOUGHTS)

The second cognitive error likely to prove especially unhelpful in our present context is ‘negative automatic thoughts’. These are negative thoughts that we relate to ourselves in disproportionate and irrational ways. They often involve over-generalisation. An example is: ‘Work did not go well today so I am clearly incapable of doing my job.’ Or: ‘I forgot to wash my hands properly and therefore I am a useless person.’ Or: ‘People are having difficulty controlling coronavirus, so, if I catch it, I will certainly pass it on to everyone I know.’
Even if you dismiss these thoughts seconds after you think them, having these kinds of negative thoughts repeatedly throughout the day will still have an effect on your mood. Other examples include presuming that things are your fault when they are not, or presuming that you will be unable to assist others if called upon. Recognising negative automatic thoughts helps greatly with preventing them and minimising their impact in our lives.

Edmund Burke, an eighteenth-century Irish statesman and philosopher, wrote that ‘nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little’.

In the case of coronavirus, this means acknowledging the extent of the global problem, but then focusing on what we can do in our daily lives to assist with addressing it: staying informed, following WHO guidelines about hygiene and avoiding transmission, and seeking to carry on with the other parts of our lives as best as possible.

DO FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL IN THIS SITUATION (ESPECIALLY WHEN EXPLAINING CORONAVIRUS TO CHILDREN)

DO STAY INFORMED ABOUT CORONAVIRUS (BUT DO NOT OBSESS)
First, stay informed about coronavirus but do not obsess about it. While coronavirus is certainly very bad news (there is absolutely nothing good about it), we amplify its negative psychological effects if we obsess over the repetitive media coverage and consume every single update from every single country every single day. While it is good to stay informed, it is not necessary to read about each case as it is diagnosed in each country around the world. Enough is enough.

DO STAY INFORMED ABOUT CORONAVIRUS (BUT DO NOT OBSESS)
First, stay informed about coronavirus but do not obsess about it. While coronavirus is certainly very bad news (there is absolutely nothing good about it), we amplify its negative psychological effects if we obsess over the repetitive media coverage and consume every single update from every single country every single day. While it is good to stay informed, it is not necessary to read about each case as it is diagnosed in each country around the world. Enough is enough