“The pandemic has produced a petri dish of psychological factors that may lead to emotional health problems: anxiety, brain fog, depression, and PTSD,” says Luana Marques, a psychologist and professor at Harvard Medical School. Symptoms of fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout are common, and stress can have long-lasting effects on brain physiology and function... Some 15 months of lockdowns, loneliness, Zoom calls, grief, illness, monotony, job loss, and economic hardship has caused “an extraordinary rise in anxiety and depression,” says Boston College developmental psychologist Rebekah Levine Coley. “The level of these disorders ... are unprecedented.”... Some are suffering from what European psychologists Marcantonio Spada and Ana Nikčević dubbed “COVID-19 anxiety syndrome.” It’s characterized by coping behaviors “that can keep people locked into a state of continuous anxiety and fear,” with people afraid to go out, avoiding people and public places, and worrying constantly about themselves or others contracting the virus, Spada says.