Psycho-Neuroendocrine-Immune Interactions in COVID-19: Potential Impacts on Mental Health

What is it about?

In this article, we discuss how COVID-19 pandemic can affect mental health. For this, we use a multidisciplinary approach, considering concepts from Neuroscience, Immunology, and Endocrinology, suggesting that infection by SARS-CoV-2 can lead to brain and behavioral changes. Other aspects associated with the pandemic were also addressed, such as socioeconomic issues, including social inequality and financial stress, which can affect the interactions between the nervous, immune and endocrine systems, adding to the effects of the stress of social isolation and infection, damaging also mental health. Finally, far from encouraging actions or policies contrary to social isolation, we point out some guidelines on measures that can reduce the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health, discussing the urgency of joining efforts for transdisciplinary research in order to curb the other "pandemic" to come: that of mental disorders, if we are not already in it.

Featured Image

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Photo by CDC on Unsplash