**2. Effects of lockdown on the psyche of people**

To restrict the rate of both infections and death of fellow-citizens from COVID-19 and meanwhile also to prepare ourselves for the pandemic of such a magnitude, interindividual physical contacts were restricted in the form of social lockdown. Under this situation, minimal and only emergency movement of general public was allowed. The central objective was to forbid people from two different families or nearby inhabitants to come in close contact with each other and thus break the cycle of infection [2]. Following this there was a significant reduction in the growth rate and increase in doubling time of cases [3]. But this swift change in people's daily life in the form of loss of freedom and dissociation from family members led to dramatic consequences. Confinement of physical space, lack of mobility, fear of contraction, loss of income, hopelessness and growing ambiguity along with uncertainty and unpredictability over the disease were some of the observed collective experiences affecting the wellbeing during lockdown [4]. COVID-19 led to roughly 5–20% contraction of global economy which could result in an increased poverty rate for the first time since 1990 with Asia, Africa and Latin America enduring the hardest blow [5]. Factories and industries were shut down forcing thousands of informal workers to return back to their native villages in absence of any form of conveyance. A survey conducted by International Labor Organization in April 2020 estimated roughly 2.5 crores job loss in 2020 alone worldwide due to the pandemic, predicting a deep economic crisis in coming days. The situation of Crises often reveals the structural inequalities present in the social and political dimensions (such as the unequal distribution of resources or the uneven delivery of healthcare). United States unemployment rates rose and the country neared a recession and as the pandemic progressed it created a situation of socioeconomic crisis which was reflected across the borders. Unemployment rate in urban India rose to 20.9% during the April–June quarter of 2020 pushing over 40 crores informal workers jobless [6]. Roughly 80 million children of under 1 year missed their routine vaccination while an estimated 38% increase in maternal mortality was registered due to health system disruption resulting from COVID [5]. This sudden human tragedy required heavy adjustment and was difficult to adapt quickly as we humans are gregarious in nature and always need social connect in our lives especially during a crisis [4]. This was the largest psychological experiment ever conducted as 1/3rd of the world's population was living under some kind of lockdown, dealing with an intense stressor called "loneliness" [7].
