Page 7 - IJPS-8-2

International Journal of

Population Studies

COMMENTARY
Psychosocial stress and risk assessment during

the COVID-19 pandemic: Some preliminary
thoughts

1
Milanko Čabarkapa , Teodora Safiye *, and Medo Gutić 2,3
2
1 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
2 Facuty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia
3 Health Center “Dr. Branko Zogović,” Plav, Montenegro

Abstract

Human life and activities are associated with risk, as risk is inherent in all forms of
human existence and action. Risk is regarded as a phenomenological variable
considering how people perceive it, especially during a crisis they experience. This
paper discusses the characteristics of human behavior in a crisis, with an emphasis
on hazard perception and risk assessment, for the purpose of understanding people’s
decisions and adaptation before, during, and after a crisis. The discussion focuses on
the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic.

Keywords: Psychosocial stress; Risk assessment; Health crisis; COVID-19; Serbia

*Corresponding author:
Teodora Safiye
(teodoras0306@gmail.com) 1. Introduction
Citation: Čabarkapa M, Safiye T, Terms such as stress, crisis, and risk are nowadays frequently used in the scientific literature
Gutić M. (2022) Psychosocial stress
and risk assessment during the as well as in professional communication, especially now during the global coronavirus
COVID-19 pandemic: Some disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These terms best describe human behavior in
preliminary thoughts. International emergencies and extreme situations. When an individual is faced with sudden, unknown,
Journal of Population Studies,
8(2):1-5. and dangerous circumstances, the first thing to emerge is a state of shock and mental
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.1335 and emotional inhibition, manifesting as narrowed consciousness, and sometimes even a
Received: March 11, 2022 state of catalepsy, which profoundly affects the biological sense of survival of the afflicted
individual (Čabarkapa, 2016). Such responses are commonly associated with wars, severe
Accepted: April 28, 2022 medical conditions or injuries, earthquakes, or other “no-escape” situations due to natural
Published: May 10, 2022 or technological disasters (Seneviratne, Baldry and Pathirage, 2010).
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). In the majority of other stressful situations, both privately and professionally,
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the especially in the case of psychosocial stressors, which manifest as complicated and
Creative Commons Attribution challenging situations, a certain level of cognitive ability is retained in the earliest stage
License, permitting distribution, of shock and disbelief, which is why a person is able to consciously and unconsciously
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is question what is happening and how it affects them (Biggs, Brough and Drummond,
properly cited. 2017). This provides an opportunity to use some of the active strategies to overcome
stress, which people most often do instead of succumbing to their imminent fate of
Publisher’s Note: AccScience
Publishing remains neutral with surrender and death.
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional The crisis caused by the uncontrolled spreading of the coronavirus has been
affiliations regarded as a form of biological war against an unknown enemy, which resulted in an

Volume 8 Issue 2 (2022) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.1335