‘Some days I get very depressed’

Seniors discuss toll that isolation, loneliness are taking on mental health

Jackie Potter cannot stop thinking about her five dead children.

The 60-year-old lives alone in Hamilton with nothing to do during the pandemic. So she thinks.

St. Matthew’s House, the seniors centre where she’d normally spend her days with her friends, is closed due to COVID-19.

She sits in her small house and remembers the twins, a boy and girl who were stillborn. She remembers her son who was killed by a drunk driver. She remembers the massive heart attacks that claimed the life of her daughter and another son.

“Some days I get very depressed,” Potter says. “Other days I try to be OK, but it doesn’t always work. I’ll eventually get to see them in heaven.”

Her two dogs, Baby Bullet and Princess Anne, help.

“If it wasn’t for them, I would have gone nuts by now,” she says.

St. Matthew’s House acted as an anchor for dozens of seniors in the area. Without that anchor, Potter says, she and her friends feel adrift and forgotten.

Psychologists worry about the “echo pandemic” — the mental health crisis that will remain in the wake of COVID-19. Isolation is a major contributing factor to that looming crisis, experts say.

Anxiety and depression are up since lockdown measures came into effect across the country in March, according to a survey of 1,803 Canadians by the national charity the Mental Health Research Council.

“What’s clear are levels of anxiety and depression have really taken an unprecedented toll on people psychologically,” said Dr. David Dozois, a psychologist on the board of the research council and a professor at Western University.

Potter says getting out and being social helps her tremendously.

“I have schizophrenia and bipolar, so this is really hard getting stuck in the house like this,” she says.

She fills her days watching her DVDs, “over and over and over.”

Potter’s friend from the seniors centre, Debbie Brown, also struggles.

“I have anxiety problems and my anxiety right now is really up,” she says. “I’m afraid to go out, even to a store. I feel taped in, it’s terrible.”

Brown, 60, lives on her own in an apartment building and has not seen her children or grandchildren, including a new baby, in months.

Brown used to go to the seniors centre five times a week, doing crafts like rug-hooking.

“It was really good to get out of my home to be with other people,” Brown says.

“Now I’m home all the time. I’m not going to be ashamed — I do get a bit depressed.”