How is COVID affecting your mental health?

At this point, I do not believe that anyone can deny that COVID has dramatically affected their lives. I hear of stories of adult children who are unable to visit their elderly parents in nursing homes. I know of another family whose mother was hospitalized, and they were unable to visit her during the hospitalization. Visits via online options like FaceTime were attempted, but often the visits did not happen. Nurses were busy and unable to assist elderly clients with the technology needed to facilitate the visits. So loved ones were separated not just by distance but even technology was unable to assist in keeping them connected.

The statistics for domestic violence, substance abuse and suicide rates are soaring. Social distancing is causing great stressors to individual. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. What does social distancing, the stress of worrying about contracting COVID and possibly infecting loved ones, the unemployment rate, work from home, the inability to attend weddings or even our favorite restaurants are factors that in what is making it more difficult to deal with this pandemic. 

I have read from several different sites that an additional 75,000 people may have died during this COVID pandemic due to substance abuse overdoses and suicide. 

Our lives are being inextricably changed. And the changes are affecting us in profound ways. We are social creatures designed for proximity seeking. We are designed to be together. This pandemic is a massive social experiment.

So, take care of yourselves. Make time to connect with friends and family. Remember you are designed to be in relationships with people. Working from home can become an isolating experience. 

I believe we will begin to see the numbers show how COVID has affected us in our mental health. At this point, I just strongly encourage you to listen to yourself, reach out,  schedule regular contact with friends and family (yes! put it on your calendars), use social media to reach out, don’t be a passive consumer of information but let people know how you are doing, reach out, continue to make connections while staying safe and observe social distancing norms. Do no discount how this is affecting you.