COVID-19: Mental Health and Cognitive Health

Since the end of December 2019, the Chinese city of Wuhan has registered a new type of pneumonia caused by COVID-19, which has spread to all Chinese provinces and eventually the rest of the world. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO), called its members for an emergency meeting and declared that there was a global outbreak of COVID-19, which demanded immediate public policies of an international scope. In this context, according to the theory of the Behavioral Immune System, people tend to develop negative emotions (aversion, anxiety, and depression, etc.) due to the occurrence, as well as, negative cognitive evaluation for their self-protection. When threatened by potential diseases, people tend, in general, to develop “escape behavior”, noted by their avoidance of symptomatic third parties as well as strictly obeying social norms of conformity.