[VIDEO] Dr. Sajal Tanna tries to counsel family and friends in India from Chicago. Just a few months ago, India’s ruling party declared the pandemic was over — now the situation is worse than ever.

Featuring: Sajal Tanna, MD, MPH, infectious diseases at Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Going home comes from “a need to seek ways to optimize certainty during an uncertain time. The goal is to obtain safety and security,” says Jacqueline K. Gollan, professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. Moving home is a coping mechanism provoked by a biological reaction to the uncertainty of the pandemic—a reaction to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the subsequent release of stress hormones.

“Caregivers are reporting that the pandemic and school closures have taken a substantial emotional toll on their children and adolescents,” said lead author Tali Raviv, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Center for Childhood Resilience and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in a statement.

“Because we’ve been less active in many cases and because our eating patterns have been less healthy, those things definitely could have gotten out of whack,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist, epidemiologist and chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Unless you get with your doctor and measure them carefully, you won’t know your numbers, and you won’t know what you need to address.”