A Spiritual View to COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Any crisis (personal or collective) brings along an in-built stress. It cripples people from living a normal life; sometimes, it leads people to the extreme condition of permanent damage. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation has brought in unexpected misery-victimizing millions of people.1 COVID-19 is leading to intense psychosocial issues and comprising mental health marking a secondary health concern all around the world.2 Millions of people from almost all cultures around the world have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis not only physical, mental, and psychosocial, but also psychospiritual. Althoughmuchmany studies including understanding of epidemiology, clinical features, mode of transmission, counteract the spread of the virus, and challenges of global health have been conducted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, scarce studies have been reported about spiritual dimension of the disease in the literature. Herein, we present the effect of COVID-19 crisis on mental and spiritual health to draw attention to spiritual dimension of COVID-19 disease. COVID-19 can cause several significant neurological disorders and the pandemic has been linked to a rise in people reporting mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety. Neurocognitive symptoms associated with COVID19 include delirium, both acute and chronic attention and memory impairment related to hippocampal and cortical damage, as well as learning deficits in both adults and children.3 Marroquin et al4 found that stay-at-home order status and personal distancing were independently associated with higher symptoms including depression, generalized anxiety disorder, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and acute stress, beyond protective effects of available social resources (social support and social network size). In our daily practice, we have also noted many psychosocial symptoms in some people during COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from medicine, one could become strengthened to face the situation. The psychological and spiritual solutions could be focused to face the COVID-19 crisis.1 Examination of the extant literature indicated that populations around the world rely often on support from their loved-ones, closed significant others, outdoor and physical activities, and spirituality to cope with the COVID-19-related distress. Increased sense of meaning/purpose since the COVID-19 pandemic was also reported.5 Current researches reveal the intimate link between health and spirituality. Among vulnerable populations, spirituality serves a critical purpose in a person’s wellbeing. One of themanyestablishedvalues of spirituality is that it helps people to deal with major life stressors. This has become more pronounced as the world grapples with the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.6Roberto et al7 found that the positive influence of spirituality on resilience, hope, optimism, peace, and comfort during the COVID-19 crisis. In another study, spirituality, knowledge, attitudes, andpracticewere significantly correlatedwith anxiety regarding COVID-19 in the general population.8Kasapoğlu9 reported that when the spirituality of individualswas strong during the COVID-19 outbreak, resilience levels were high and levels of tolerance to uncertainty increased, and thus anxiety levels decreased. We have also observed positive influence of spirituality onpsychosocial andmental health of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. People with strong spirituality have experienced less psychosocial and mental health problems. We believe the COVID-19 outbreak is a general calamity given to people by Allah, fromwhich no one can escape and be protected. It is a divine warning, a wrath, and torment. It has been staged as a scene similar to the scene that the oppressors will encounter in the apocalypse in this world. The Quran says “And fear the trail, which affecteth not in particular (only) those of you who do wrong: and know that Allah is strict in