Fear of spreading COVID-19 infection in a female with psychotic illness leading to suicidal and homicidal attempt: A case report.

The psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic has been wide ranging (Tandon, 2020). There are reports of new onset psychiatric disorders in general population (Xiong et al., 2020). Additionally there are reports of worsening or relapse of ongoing psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and other anxiety disorders (Davide et al., 2020; Pan et al., 2021). Some of the reports also suggest new onset psychotic disorders or worsening of psychotic disorders (Kozloff et al., 2020), possibly due to various aetiologies, such as increase in stress levels, use of medications to manage symptoms of COVID-19 infection, etc (Brown et al., 2020). In some of the reports, the manifestations of psychiatric disorders, i.e., neuro-psychiatric manifestation has included issues specific to COVID-19 infection, for example coronophobia (Asmundson and Taylor, 2020; Dinakaran et al., 2020). Few case reports have presented psychotic symptoms related to COVID-19 infection (Parker et al., 2021; Parra et al., 2020; Varatharaj et al., 2020). In our report, we aim to describe a young female with psychotic and depressive symptoms who presented with suicidal behaviour and psychopathology related to COVID 19 infection, who was managed with electroconvulsive therapy and psychotropics.