Psychological and social impact and mourning for breaking habits in a pandemic situation: a comparison between Spanish and Venezuelans.

Abstract

In 2019, an infectious respiratory disease called SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) spread and was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the World Health Organization. During and after this, very diverse situations were evident in the different continents and countries that affected their populations at all levels. The present study focuses on analyzing and comparing the situations developed in Spain and Venezuela, evaluating the social and psychological impact as well as the mourning caused by the loss of routines. For this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Venezuelans and Spaniards aged between 18 and 25 or 30 and 45 years old who did not suffer from high anxiety or depression at that time. In this interview, information was collected about anxiety, depression, ways of relating, use of social networks, and grief due to loss of routines during Covid-19. The information collected from these allowed us to identify a similar impact in the two countries, although at the same time we also appreciate certain differences resulting from particular situations generated by the living conditions of both countries.