Dr. Jasmine
- Apr 6, 2020
- 2 min read

How to Overcome Panic Attack During covid 19

Today is the day 5 of Malaysia partial lockdown.

As medical personnel, I still attend to patients in clinic during this lockdown period.

I realize one thing that’s up-going in-trend, which is, on an average basis, I will be seeing at least one patient per day who will walk into the clinic, having “Panic Attack”, whereby the symptoms are as below:

chest pain or discomfort
palpitations, pounding heart, accelerated heart rate
sweating, trembling, shaking
sense of shortness of breath, feeling of choking
nausea or abdominal distress
feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded
feeling detached from oneselffear of losing control
fear of dying
numbness or tingling sensation
Chills or hot flushes

During the episode, patients have the urge to flee or escape and have a sense of impending doom (as though they are dying from a heart attack or suffocation).

Patients with panic disorder have recurring episodes of panic, fear of recurrent attack resulting in significant behavioral changes and worry about the implications or consequences of the attack (e.g. losing control, going crazy, dying).

Panic disorder may result in changes in personality traits, characterized by the patient becoming more passive, dependent, or withdrawn.

One of the reasons the number of people with “Panic Attack” increases is due to the circulating of the news about the COVID-19, be it the real news or the fake news. With the daily increasing number of cases, the general reaction of a normal human being will be panic, and it will trigger a panic attack to occur as well.

When I attend to one of those patients with panic attack, I always advice a few things thing to them, one of them is not to panic. Being panic or worry will not help to ease the situation, instead being stress will also weakened our immune system and we will be more prone to fall sick.

But, it is always easier to be said than to be done.

Instead of being panic, over here, there are a few things that you can do at home to distract yourself and keep yourself busy during this lock down period: