We are cranky
The coronavirus pandemic has led to a marked deterioration in Americans’ mental health, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study made public on Thursday. That study, which surveyed 5,412 Americans, found that “40.9% of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition.”
The only surprise is that the number is that low.
According to the new study, 31 percent of respondents were suffering from symptoms of anxiety or depression; 26 percent experienced symptoms of traumatic disorder; 13 percent were using drugs or alcohol more heavily, or for the first time, to cope with the pandemic; and 11 percent had seriously contemplated suicide.
Some are mourning a loss, some are dealing with unemployment, eviction, young children with no school to go to, older children with education plans disrupted, and on and on.
Significantly, more than 90 percent said they were not being treated for anxiety, depression or posttraumatic stress disorder before the pandemic struck, meaning that their symptoms arrived with the coronavirus and its attendant social disruptions.
As one would expect. It would be bizarre if 300 whatever million people met all this with unruffled equanimity.
Just how the nation will emerge from that pit remains unclear. Trump has promised a vaccine before the end of the year, but that time frame has been widely described as overly optimistic. Most experts believe that the current state of affairs will continue well into 2021.
So that’s awesome.
One can only guess as to how much better these numbers might have been had there been a competent and concerned adult in the White House.
I know my depression and anxiety has been worsened by the pandemic. The odd thing though is that my mental health is actually slightly better, because working remote has removed me from a toxic work environment. I mostly just interact with my students, which is what most teachers want to do anyway, and I don’t have constant negative messages assaulting me. I don’t have to deal with the casual sexism and ageism, or listening to all the Trumpistas.
That tells me just how deadly my job is, because the intensity of the pandemic-exacerbated depression manages to be less than the let up in my work-induced symptoms. My therapist wants me to retire at my earliest possible moment, while, as she puts it, there is something left of me.
Yeah. If I could turn on the TV and hear an Obama trying to deal with it like an adult, or even a Clinton feeling my pain, it would help a lot. But instead we have a polarized society and a president who decided to politicize a national (global, actually) public health emergency, and turn it into a catastrophe.
He’s not being optimistic; he’s been promised it by Putin. One wonders what price he paid.