On the nature of fear and anxiety triggered by COVID-19

• Autor(a) principal: Coelho, Carlos M.
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Suttiwan, Panrapee, Arato, Nikolett, Zsido, Andras N.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/16652
• topic: Coronavirus disease 2019; Anxiety; Fear of the unknown; Illness anxiety disorder; Posttraumatic stress disorder; Isolation; Disgust sensitivity; Media coverage

Emergencies that occur during natural disasters, such as avalanches, earthquakes, and floods, tend to be sudden, unexpected, and ephemeral and recruit defensive responses, similar to the ones recruited when faced with dangerous animals. Defensive behaviors are triggered by activity in survival circuits that detects imminent threats and fear is the conscious emotion of that follows immediately. But this particular threat (COVID-19) is useable and mysterious, triggering anxieties much more than fear. We conducted a literature search on May 1, 2020 in Google Scholar, PsychInfo, and PubMed with search terms related to COVID-19 fears and found 28 relevant articles. We categorized the papers into six groups based on the content and implications: fear of the unknown, social isolation, hypochondriasis, disgust, information-driven fears, and compliance.