There has been an increase in self-harm and suicide ideation among people since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, says a study ‘Covid-19 Blues’ conducted by Bengaluru-based Suicide Prevention India Foundation (SPIF). The rates of relapse among people who had recovered from a mental health condition has risen and due to the spike in need for their services, mental health professionals are also experiencing caregiver fatigue.

“Everyone’s mental health is getting impacted during lockdown but we wanted to specifically focus on whether self-harm and suicide ideation had increased and whether people who were no longer in therapy were experiencing relapses,” said Nelson Vinod Moses, founder, SPIF. “We sent out the online survey to more than 300 therapists as we wanted to also find out how it was impacting them. We got 159 completed responses.”