Previous studies about vector-borne diseases have emphasized the feedback between human psychology and diseases but neglected the changes in psychological processes. Here I first studied whether and how the two types of psychological dynamics in people’s Terror-To-Death (TTD) — periodical terror reinforcement and memory decay of terror — can influence the host-vector-pathogen interactions. Through developing a generic Ross-MacDonald model with TTD dynamics tailored for Zika virus transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquito, I found that in general, the increase in initial terror increases control effort, while memory decay of terror decreases disease control. Memory decay also exhibits a threshold effect: when initial terror is below certain level, TTD decay would not influence the system much; once initial terror reaches a threshold, memory decay of TTD can largely reduce the public’s control effort, increase mosquito population and disease level in the system under a larger mosquitoes’ carrying capacity. Adding periodical terror reinforcement could introduce dynamical oscillation to the system, dampen the peak of human infection, and shorten the time of disease outbreak. If the reinforcement frequency is large enough, system dynamics could approach the scenario with constant TTD in the absence of memory decay. This work significantly advances the theory in disease epidemiology and biopsychology and can provide guidance for disease control by considering the joint effects of initial terror, the public’s memory decay, and the frequency of terror reinforcement simultaneously.