**7. What can be done now?**

Although government regulations were necessary to maintain social balance and guarantee the safety of individuals, a strategy to deal with psychosocial issues related to the crisis and its consequences in the community was relatively lacking [15].

History has shown that mental health impact of pandemics outlasts the physical impact, suggesting that today's elevated mental health need may continue well beyond the coronavirus outbreak itself and we may be heading towards an outbreak of a second pandemic, that of mental health crisis. As people faced the onslaught of pandemic related stressors, they wished and wanted to lean over, on each other for connection and coping strategies to ease the weight of public health crisis on their mental health, which was sadly cut down due to lockdown and isolation. Dissatisfaction with levels of social interaction led to negative affect which was further associated with a slowing of passage of time. The slower the passage of time, the higher was the negative emotions experienced escalating the feelings of helplessness and anxiety. A report highlights that the number of adults with anxiety or depression in U.S. increased four-hundred percent in the sixteen months following COVIDrelated lockdowns [11].

As rightly said by Dr. Tedros Adhanom, DG of W.H.O. "Good mental health is absolutely fundamental to overall health and wellbeing" [12]. During this public health emergency when the external environment is not in our control, it is imperative to focus on building and strengthening our mental immunity. People with strong psychological resilience and a healthy life appear to be less affected by COVID-19. This statement underpins that fear of pandemic disrupts people's psychology and the psychology of those who had an underlying illness before the pandemic or had family or friends who were infected or had died. Therefore, psychological resilience and being healthy are important individual characteristics that can be developed in facing the fear of COVID-19 and the psychological problems caused by this fear [41]. Other lessons learnt are that safety policies, accurate information dissemination about pandemic prevention and pandemic prevention impacts should be emphasized. There was a negative influence of attitudinal construct and mythical behavior on disease prevention practices especially in South-Asian countries [42]. Peer support, risk averse behavior and internet based cognitive behavior are some pragmatic implications for stress management at macro and micro level during an epidemiological level. Apart from these, individuals and communities could deliberately cultivate resilience, healthy coping strategies, mindfulness and well-being. These all are processes and they can be acquired with practice and learned dynamically. Recent researches have depicted those healthy coping strategies have helped individuals to stay positive, view lockdown as a golden opportunity to ruminate on their individual and social identity and to march ahead to enhance their skills [43]. Cultivating a sense of community belongingness may also help and prepare people to face the mental health issues that they may endure in the upcoming days. Throughout the pandemic, leading public health organizations — including the CDC, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the World Health Organization, and the United Nations — have released general considerations and resources addressing the mental health and well-being of both general populations and specifically high-risk groups during the pandemic [34]. In India, along with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), the Indian Psychiatric Society also brought out a rulebook for effective mental health management titled "Mental Health Challenges during COVID-19 pandemic: Guidance for psychiatrists. It covers telepsychiatry,
