Mental health in the age of COVID-19, a Mexican experience

As of June 2020 the number of Coronavirus cases in Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are just under 2.5 million infections and over 140,000 deaths. The health systems in half of the countries in the Americas and the rest of the world have faced the pandemic positioned from different perspectives. While Canada and the United States already had extensive experience in the practice of telemedicine, other countries such as Mexico and the Caribbean, doctors from both private and public sectors have been forced to start practicing medicine remotely. As a result there have been limitations such as poor access to technology, lack of privacy legislation, and difficulties with fee collection among many others. These situations must be taken in account to understand what is happening in the region. On the other hand, the need to continue providing medical attention is indisputable. We understand that COVID 19 besides other systems damages the CNS, patients present severe neuropsychiatric symptoms that range from headache, anosmia, ageusia, confusional state alteration of consciousness, toxic metabolic encephalopathies, encephalitis, seizures, cerebral vascular events, Guillan Barre-type demyelinating neuropathies, to the extent of conditions such as anxiety, acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and eventually psychotic episodes. As time passes we try to differentiate the origin of the symptoms. We will learn which of these symptoms are a result of metabolic complications, which others are due to drug's secondary effects and which ones are adaptive response. Therefor our contribution to the editorial supplements is given in two lines of analysis: disease physiopathology and ways to deliver treatment to the population.