COVID-19: “Coping with the Pandemic from a Mental Health Standpoint”

This year has been highly atypical for everybody.  The COVID-19 pandemic has put an unexpected amount of stress on our lives.  COVID came out of the blue to change it all in our lives.  When 2020 started, nobody in his/her wildest dreams knew what was in store for us this year.  Most of our personal plans for this year were shattered by the arrival of COVID-19. 

WE ALL HAVE LOST SOMETHING BECAUSE OF THIS COVID-19 PANDEMIC. Our worlds were turned upside down in 2020. What initially seemed a far off problem in a far off city in China in January, became a real problem here in the quaint little town of Snohomish, Washington, where the first case of COVID-19 was detected.  This was the case of a 31 year old man who had returned from China after visiting family there.  Within a few weeks, more and more cases were detected in the Seattle area and in a nursing home in Kirkland, WA.  A month later, Washington state was the initial epicenter of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. 

While the federal government minimized the problem and promised us all that “everything was under control” and flights were not grounded like they were in Europe, the virus was rapidly spreading throughout our country–jumping like an uncontrolled wildfire from state to state.  Soon enough, Washington state was no longer the epicenter of the pandemic, but New York had rapidly taken its place; and from there, it would spread everywhere else in the country. 

By now, we are six months into this nightmare–the virus is all over our entire nation.  And, against all predictions, the virus spread is not dying down but actually going up rapidly in many states; and the second wave–which may be even bigger and more lethal–predicted for the fall has not even started yet. 

This pandemic has changed our lives radically.  The virus now has been diagnosed in 16 million people around the world. According to the Center for Disease Control (US CDC), 3,952,273 cases have been detected and 142,755 people have died from this viral infection.  But the number of people detected is just the tip of the iceberg.  For each case of COVID-19 detected, there are at least 10 to 15 cases undetected. So, this puts the total number of people infected with COVID-19 as of the date of this writing in our country to approximately 40 million.  Out of 330 million inhabitants in the US today, this represents over 10 percent of the American population. One out of 10 people you deal with everyday may be infected with COVID-19!

The “new normal” created by this pandemic has brought along numerous psychological and psychiatric complications.  We will be looking into these problems in this article and the ones that will follow in this series in more detail. And I will be offering solutions to the challenges we confront as we go along. But, to begin,  to confront this pandemic effectively, it is important to keep these points in mind:

1-The pandemic is REAL, not a hoax–and definitely not a political creation –neither from the right or the left.

2-It is true that some governments use the pandemic with political ends, but viruses have no political colors and they do not discriminate based on political,  affiliations, gender, race, or creed. Viruses will infect and kill anyone who is susceptible.

3-This viral pandemic is not the creation of a biological attack by any world power.  This is obvious by the fact as every nation in the world is affected.  China, Russia, the US, the Europeans, the Arabs, Communist countries, Free World countries, Third World countries. We Humans are all in the same boat against a common biological enemy.

4-Pandemics have occurred since immemorial times. And definitely, they have happened thousand of years before humans could grow viruses and bacteria in labs.  Proof of this is the fact that the last big world wide pandemic, the so called “Spanish Flu” of 1918 happened at a time when viruses were virtually unknown.  That pandemic, which was caused by a virulent strain of the Influenza virus, killed an estimated 50 million people world-wide in over two years.  This one, so far, has only killed 600 thousand.

5-It is vital to understand these medical facts to dispel political ideology and conspiracy theories from scientific and medical truth in these circumstances. 

It is important to dispel politics and conspiracy theories from our minds because they get in the way of an objective and effective response from all of us to act together for our common welfare against this common enemy: the COVID-19. 

The Psychology behind the Pandemic

From a psychological perspective, it is important to understand that when people experience negative events caused by an invisible enemy, it is logical to assume that “something weird is going on” and to try to find some logic to the situation by finding scapegoats.  It is human to try to find “the hand” behind it all: Some evil dark force that is pulling the strings of the whole thing from behind the curtains.  This natural human tendency to find “someone” to blame for unexplained natural disasters is what feeds the many conspiracy theories that currently circulate in the US and around the world. This psychological tendency to come up with explanations for events is exacerbated by the fact that 2020 is a presidential election year in the US and finds the country more divided politically, ideologically, and racially than ever in the last 50 years.

The heart-wrenching problem officials in every country are confronting since the beginning of this pandemic is how to strike a balance between the medical needs to slow down the spread of the virus (containment and mitigation strategies) to avoid the collapse of the medical system and an excess of human lives loss and the needs of keeping the economies of countries going. 

The quarantine measures imposed by the authorities to contain spread help slow down the rapid spread of the virus, but they do have a strong negative effect on economic activity.  This reality leads all countries–and not just the United States–into economic recession and potential economic depression.

This economic depression, in turn, cause a whole other set of problems for people as they are being laid off, put on furlough, and made to lose income due to inability to run their businesses.  As a result of these draconian measures of containment posed by quarantines, many are unable to make ends meet, they experience severe financial distress, as they risk being unable to pay rent/mortgages or put food on their tables.

So, when we look at the problems brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we can divide them in two sets:

1-THOSE CAUSED DIRECTLY BY THE VIRUS

a-Disease, infection, death, hospitalizations, health systems overloads, breakdown–and potential collapse.

2-INDIRECT EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE MEASURES TO CONTAIN VIRAL SPREAD

a-The health care system is modified to attend to the virus cases and has to postpone or suspend other critical services.

b-People have to respect “social distancing” measures enforced by state authorities, which affect their emotional lives by increasing social isolation and loneliness.

c-Children, adolescents, and the young in general, cannot attend their educational activities in person. This reality creates a massive problem for parents because of the peremptory need to find care-giving for children that now must kept at home.  There is also great uncertainty as to what is going to happen come the fall as to whether classes are going to be restarted or not.

d-People are not allowed to go to work, businesses have had to close down, many businesses–and entire industries–in these circumstances have gone bankrupt.  As a result, individuals end up being isolated from others, quarantined at home with too much time to think.  In these atypical circumstances, many have nothing to do, so boredom sets in.  Many people are terrified of infection, isolation and death; others fear poverty more than anything else; and yet others fear other people more than anything as now the Other appears as the potential “infective agent.”  This can only increase feelings of mutual DISTRUST among people that were already present in American society before this pandemic.

The list of indirect problems created by this COVID19 pandemic is much, much longer than this, and I will continue to list them in the next article, but in honor to space and time, I will have to stop here today.  In the next article I will start offering some solutions to these problems.

I would like to hear your opinions on this matter. 

I would also like to hear from you the type of problems you are experiencing today as a result of this pandemic and–if you have questions regarding this matter that pertain to the medical or psychiatric aspects of this question–by all means–share them with the rest of us, I will try to answer them to the best of my abilities. 

See you in three days.

Dr T