Understanding and reducing the fear of COVID-19

Corona exhaustion (CORONEX): COVID-19-induced exhaustion grinding down humanity

“…A rational response to fear can be mitigated by responding rationally to that fear ( Ng and Kemp, 2020 ), reducing misinformation, including by improving the reliability of published information ( Teixeira da Silva, 2020b ), by better preparedness, including through lessons learned from prior pandemics ( Deming and Chen, 2020 ), a better understanding and appreciation of the burnout, emotive weight and moral stress associated with long-term challenges faced by healthcare workers and care providers ( Fried and Fisher, 2016 ), better and more robust economic and political management and leadership ( El Keshky et al., 2020 ), and through the availability of effective, reliable and trustworthy health solutions, including robust and safe testing and detection methods ( Tang et al., 2020 ) as well as vaccines ( Haynes et al., 2020 ).…”

Social representations of the coronavirus and causal perception of its origin: The role of reasons for fear

“…The notion of "fear" plays a prominent role in the collective consciousness of the 21st century (Delouvée et al, 2013) and several academic works have been devoted to it. But whether it is a question of studying the rise of risk awareness (Slovic, 1987), fear of the urban environment (Ellin, 2001), fear of crime (Garland, 2001), fear of the Other (Salecl, 2004), the amplification of fear through the media (Altheide, 2002), the impact of fear on laws (Guzelian, 2004), the relationship between fear and politics (Füredi, 2006;Robin, 2004), the question of fear as a cultural form in its own right (Tudor, 2003) or, more recently, the fear of the COVID-19 (Ng & Kemp, 2020), the latter is always examined in a specific and particular context and is only rarely considered as a global and unified sociological phenomenon in itself. Thus, as Hankiss (2001) points out, despite the number of works devoted to it, efforts to theorize the notion of collective fear are still very much neglected by the social sciences (e.g., Brewer et al, 2007;Brewin et al, 2000;Franklin et al, 2017).…”

Psychometric properties of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale amongst black South African university students

“…Fear, a negative emotional response, is one of the likely and natural mental health outcomes when facing life-threatening events such as COVID-19 (Lin et al, 2020 ; Ng & Kemp, 2020 ). The emotional response itself may lead to fear-related behaviour, which eventually determines the progress and overall outcome of a major disease outbreak (Shultz et al, 2016 ).…”