PANIC AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR OF PERSON’S INFORMATION DANGER

The article is devoted to the development of person’s panic under conditions of information turbulence. Provoking factors of panic, its course has been disclosed. The concept of “information panic” is considered, and effective methods of preventing panic behavior are given. Considering panic as a phenomenon of various sciences, it is noted that the latter develops as a result of threats of physical, moral, psychological and economic damage to humans. The peculiarity of the panic development at information danger is the appearance of a wide range of assumptions about the negative consequences in future. The authors identified internal (type of nervous system, characterological features, mental status) and external (type of childhood education, intra-family climate, general socio-psychological atmosphere in society) factors of panic development. A detailed explanation of each factor is provided. In most cases among the main reasons of panic are factors such as: information and psychological unpreparedness, the uniqueness of each extreme situation, the weakness of rational action, and the presence of emotionally unstable individuals. Panic forms an unstable, unpredictable state of the human psyche, caused by informational influence, which entails a number of inappropriate actions, and at the heart of this phenomenon is informational and psychological turbulence. A clear example of the panic’s development was the recent global pandemic COVID-19 and the deteriorating epidemic situation in our country, which certainly has become a new serious challenge for our society. The complexity of prevention and development of panic is based on such principles as: causal-diagnostic (timely diagnosis and monitoring of mental health), emotional-behavioral (formation of appropriate stress-resistant behavior), and medical-psychological (organization of appropriate medical and psychological care), and information-competent (increase of information competence), and socio-cultural (development of information-psychological culture).