Does an Individual’s Living Accommodation Impact their Ability to Cope with the Pandemic?A Hypothesis for Designing Infrastructure to Eliminate Mental Health Problems during COVID-19

摘要

The coronavirus(COVID-19)pandemic has caused severe medical emergencies,economic depression,inflation,social distress,and research burden worldwide.Despite the severity of the spreading COVID-19,individual governments and the World Health Organization have mandated several safety protocols including quarantine,physical distancing,advanced research in decoding the disease mechanism to build an effective vaccine,and promoting mental health to achieve the aim of coping through this infectious pandemic.Around the globe,mental health research emphasizes how social isolation impacts anxiety and depression,however,the cause of mental health depletion due to the type of individual's living accommodation(apartment and house)during a pandemic remains unexplored.The apartments have high elevation and high population density while the houses have low elevation and low population density as they are more spaced apart.This paper presents a novel hypothesis to maintain/enhance individuals’mental health during the pandemic,known as“Modi’s Pandemic Infrastructure Hypothesis”,which suggests that individuals residing in varying living accommodations(i.e.apartment or house)would exhibit a significant difference in the experienced pandemic(i.e.COVID-19)anxiety due to varying amount of experienced“silent stress”.Hence,any type of infrastructure(medical,residential,educational,or corporate)should be designed following the public survey of that geographic area based on hypotheses laid in this paper,to minimize the magnitude of“silent stress”.“Silent stress”can be defined as the stress that is unknowingly experienced in the assimilated living accommodation,which is responsible for depleting individuals’mental health and affecting the ability to cope with the pandemic.In support of this novel hypothesis,previous research has demonstrated that the number of coronavirus per unit area has a positive association with elevation above the ground level while a negative association with the population density.Although the scientific data supports the idea that there would be an equal trade-off in the quantity of coronavirus around an individual in both types of accommodation,however,psychologically the public would perceive it differently.Along with the two key variables(i.e.elevation and population density),other influencing factors would be taken into account while determining the magnitude of silent stress,pandemic anxiety,and the best type of infrastructure.In conclusion,this promising hypothesis will not only help the government to build anxiety-free infrastructure for pandemic times but also increase the effectiveness of medical treatments as mental health and strength is the best medicine to defeat severe diseases.