Reflections on the Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19 in Latin American Countries

Abstract

The Latin American subcontinent, with more than 600 million inhabitants, is facing different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a spectrum of social responses to the virus aggression and the governments' actions in the crisis. A rapid review of these realities in various countries includes more or less effective measures in Argentina or Colombia, uneven (and unexpected) responses to seemingly adequate management decisions in Peru, and chaotic evolution in countries that ignored the risks, such as Brazil. The economic cost of the pandemic will be large and, together with internal migration phenomena, modulatory impact of governmental decisions, breakouts of social rebelliousness, role of religious practices, risky habit transformations, and negative behavioral changes, and a variety of physical and mental health challenges as part of a “new normality”, constitute important future sociopsychological and psychiatric research topics in the subcontinent.