Why Watching the News Can Impact Mental Health

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 Epidemic is Still Proving to Be More stressful for Many people. Through an infectious disease epidemic, the CDC states anxiety may consist of changes in sleeping or eating patterns, worsening of mental health ailments, anxiety and fret about your health and the health of your family, and trouble concentrating.

Compounding this anxiety is the continuous stream of information about COVID-19 that we’re subjected to on a daily, hourly rate, and also minute-by-minute basis. “Regrettably, a great deal of the information we have today is not so much coverage since it’s a means of keeping individuals hooked on this news,” says licensed psychologist, and Logan Jones, PsyD.

Because sensational headlines capture more focus, Jones says press outlets frequently wind up focusing on catastrophe coverage –and seldom any favorable news.

Consuming a lot of this sort of information, whether actively or passively, can be quite poisonous, and what you hear has an influence on your disposition.

Even if it’s only noise in the background, Jones states that an alarmist news broadcast will nonetheless have a negative impact on your mind.

“It may be detrimental to continuously be reading the information because continuous exposure to adverse information can affect our mind,” states Annie Miller, MSW, LCSW-C, LICSW. As soon as we encounter a hazard, Miller states our mind triggers the fight or flight reaction, and also the methods in our body respond accordingly.

Consuming the information may trigger the sympathetic nervous system, allowing the human body to release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Then, as soon as a crisis is occurring, and we’re experiencing this anxiety response more often, Miller states bodily symptoms may come up. A number of the most frequent symptoms are fatigue, depression, anxiety, and difficulty sleeping.

This psychological toll and adverse influence on the mind was shown in a study that found those who saw negative substance, compared to people who watched neutral or positive substance, demonstrated an increase in equally nervous and gloomy moods just after 14-minutes of seeing television news bulletins and applications.

Besides growth in nervous and gloomy moods, the investigators also found that the results to be consistent with all the notions of stress that implicate negative disposition as a causal element in relieving debilitating thought.

 

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