COVID-19 and mental health: An Iranian perspective.

It has been more than five months since the COVID-19 has detected and spread across the world as a pandemic. The number of infected people in Asia has reached more than 1,400,000 (Up to 15 June), and the number of related deaths has risen to more than 37,000 (database, 2020). In the editorial of Asian Journal of Psychiatry (volume 50, April 2020), Dr.R. Tandon has raised two important questions. The first question deals with the relationship between COVID-19 and psychiatry and the second question is whether Asian countries have unique features or conditions in this field that are worth sharing (Tandon, 2020b).

Our answer to these questions have been stated in the past! At the time of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran, we wrote a letter to the esteemed editor, in which, with our knowledge of the situation in Iran, pointed out some of the special features of the Iranian people. In that letter, we talked about the social capital of the Iranian people (Zandifar and Badrfam, 2020b). The reason for this view was that in terms of historical experience, we, ourselves, have witnessed catastrophic experiences during the widespread floods, the course of the 8-year war and the years of subsequent construction in Iran (Badrfam and Zandifar, 2019; Zandifar and Badrfam, 2019b). In addition, we have been professionally engaged in primary health care for many years, and we are aware of Iran's history in this area (Badrfam and Zandifar, 2020).

In that letter, we emphasized the high social capital of the Iranian people in the face of complex problems, and stressed the need to pay attention to the mental health of Iranians during the COVID-19 epidemic. In the past, we have also mentioned the vulnerability of the mental health of different age groups of the Iranian people in the form of articles in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry (Badrfam et al., 2020; Zandifar and Badrfam, 2019a). It seems that the answer to the esteemed editor' s questions, at least in the case of Iran, as an Asian country, like the esteemed editor's own answers, is very clear. In that report, the need to pay attention to the relationship between COVID-19 and mental health on the one hand and Iran's experience in managing such conditions (despite numerous problems, especially due to economic constraints) (Zandifar and Badrfam, 2020a) was raised. As noted by the esteemed editor, this report, which came from an Asian country, received a lot of attention inside and outside of Iran. Until the writing of the initial text of this page, (May 12), more than 40 scientific citations in google scholar and about 30 scientific citations in pubmed about that letter noticed in less than 2 months, not only from Asia but also from other parts of the world. This amount of scientific citation nearly doubled after the final text of the article was prepared on June 15. Also, the article became one of the most downloaded articles in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry in recent times. In fact, the views of the respected editor of the Asian Journal of Psychiatry (Tandon, 2020b), in practice, have been approved by psychiatrists from various countries in a short period of time.

Throughout these articles, the need to pay attention to the mental health of patients with COVID-19, health care personnel and the general public has been emphasized in various studies, and in each study or report, significant experience and insight have been provided with the current situation.

Undoubtedly, such a prestigious collection of COVID-19 s in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry is a rich asset for researchers, experts, and healthcare professionals in Asia and around the world. They can use this valuable resources, experiences, perspectives and results of published studies to improve the mental health of different groups of people. Also, such a valuable collection can help to understand the characteristics of each country for proper use by other Asian or non-Asian countries. We can “support each other” and “learn from each other”.

We warmly shake the hands of those three old friends who one day, in a cafeteria, started the Asian Journal of Psychiatry (Tandon, 2020a), allowed more than half of the world's population to share experiences in the field of psychiatry and mental health.

Funding source

None

Declaration of Competing Interest

No conflict of interest