Dr. Margo Wrigley:

A number of us who were working within the mental health programmes during the first year of the pandemic in 2020, including Dr. Niazi, got together to write a paper on the psychological impact of pandemics and specifically Covid. There were very little data from the flu epidemic after the First World War, or the Spanish flu as it was called. However, there is considerable information on the subsequent SARS pandemic in south-east Asia, in particular. The paper talks about a tsunami in the later stages of the pandemic. After getting over the physical aspects, there can be a tsunami of psychological impacts of the pandemic. This is not well recognised but has certainly been documented in previous pandemics. There is evidence of such an impact now. I do not know of any work that was done but we were very keen, within the mental health programmes, to flag it rather than have people say the pandemic is done and dusted and we do not need to worry. Many people are still suffering.

We see this business of coronaphobia and being afraid to go out all around us and in our own families. It is a very real phenomenon. I cannot speak from a clinical perspective but my clinical colleagues in perinatal might be able to say whether they have seen it in the context of women who have attended their clinics.