COVID-19’s psychological toll is perfectly normal
Social isolation can transform a mouse’s brain. Among other behaviours, mice kept alone for two weeks become hypersensitive to a threat, freezing, and staying that way, long after the threat is over.
A flurry of recent surveys would suggest we’re all becoming similarly unhinged by COVID-19. Taken together, the polls — from Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Angus Reid Institute and human resources firm Morneau Shepell — paint a worrisome picture of strained emotions as we hit the pandemic’s seven-month mark. But how much of what people are experiencing are perfectly normal, human reactions to an entirely abnormal situation?
According to CAMH’s ongoing national survey, conducted in collaboration with Delvinia, women (24 per cent) are experiencing higher levels of anxiety than men (18 per cent), parents with children under 18 living at home are more likely to say they’re feeling depressed (29 per cent) compared to adults without kids in this age group (19 per cent). One-quarter of both men and women worry about getting COVID-19, while a worrying 29 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women are engaging in heavy episodic drinking.
More than 200 days in, we’re emotionally exhausted, according to Morneau Shepell’s latest report from its mental health index, based on an online survey of 3,000 people in late August, before the second surge. We’re less motivated at work. We’re struggling to concentrate. Worries over job security and dwindling emergency savings, and juggling multiple “mental and situational distractions, on top of the work,” is draining, Morneau Shepell’s Paula Allen, senior vice president of research, analytics and innovation, said in a release.
From Angus Reid comes the finding that the percentage of Canadians who could be categorized as “The Desolate” — those suffering from both loneliness and social isolation — has increased from 23 per cent of the population last year, to 33 per cent. Our interactions with nearly every social group have diminished. Even over the summer, despite the reopened patios and beaches and the chance to expand our bubbles, “most made an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 by avoiding personal contact with others,” the pollster
These are uncertain times, and it’s unsurprising that people would be stressed out, Gratzer says. One of his patients won’t leave his home unless absolutely necessary. “One can understand where he’s coming from — there’s virus in the community. It’s spread by contact with others.” Some people are more vulnerable in times of stress, and they are the ones we should be most worried about. Gratzer thinks of the person he saw in the emergency department a few weeks ago — someone with a history of anxiety disorder, but who is normally highly functional. Everything from the morning commute to the way he interacts with his colleagues at work to the way he has dinner has changed, Gratzer said. “He’s gone from somebody with a lot of anxiety who can cope, to somebody who calls in sick regularly and is having difficulty coping. He needs access to care. He needs evidence-based interventions.” internet radio station. “And it’s even left the people who don’t trend into the territory of clinical diagnosis with a sense of impermanence and fragility that I think there is no comparison for,” said Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.
The pandemic “has given us a sense that there can be something not which is immediate and horrifying, like 9/11 or like an earthquake, but something that is sustained and completely changes the way that we interact and socialize with one another,” Solomon told host Paul Holdengraber.
We’re struggling between being uber-cautious and under-cautious, Solomon said, “and we have to balance all the time the sense of the terrible physical risk that’s attached to seeing people, and the sense of mental or psychological risk that’s attached to not seeing people. And I think that’s especially acute for children.”
People were less anxious in the summer months, and now, with confirmed COVID19 cases creeping up, to be blunt, “more COVID, more problems,” Gratzer says. At CAMH, emergency room visits are back to pre-pandemic levels after a dramatic fall off in the first wave.
Pandemics are dynamic events, changing over time, “and so too has the stress experienced by people,” says Dr. Gordon Asmundson, a professor of psychology at the University of Regina and one of the authors of the Royal Society paper. “Until we have a better understanding of this virus, its behaviour and a vaccine, many people are going to experience stress.” About 15 per cent may not adapt, and become “functionally impaired” as a consequence of COVID-related stress, he says. “The psychological footprint of the pandemic is likely as big, if not bigger, than the medical footprint.”
“The psychological footprint of the pandemic is likely as big, if not bigger, than the medical footprint.”
Dr. Gordon Asmundson University of Regina