The Intersection of COVID-19 and Mental Health: What's the Matter with Ethics?

Abstract

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic rapidly sweeps across the world, despite the measure taken to contain the spread of the disease through quarantine, it induces a considerable degree of fear, worry and concern in the population at large. Health care providers, older people and people with underlying health conditions are the most vulnerable to the pandemic. Nations, even countries with advanced medical sciences and resources, have underestimated the perils of the pandemic. Efforts are focused on understanding the epidemiology, clinical features, transmission patterns, and management of COVID-19 disease. One aspect overlooked is the mental health crisis underpinning the effects of self-isolation/ quarantine and the deaths of loved ones—the number of positive cases in Malaysia at an exponential growth rate each day. With strict preventive measures and restrictions by the Malaysian Government in the form of nationwide Movement Control Order (also known as MCO), the citizens are going through a range of psychological and emotional reactions and fear and uncertainty of being one of the infected. Many studies have been conducted to identify the state of mental health of people during this calamity. This raises ethical concerns and legal issues with regards to the rights of individuals enduring mental illness. This paper explores the ethical issues about the research on mental health during Covid-19 pandemics and the regulatory mechanisms which protect the rights of the persons who have the symptoms of mental illness.