CABIN FEVER Leopard-print loner
To introverts and homebodies, a couple of weeks’ quarantine or a period of isolation sounds like a good time. For others, it’s a lonely nightmare with serious ramifications. So how can we keep healthy and live our best lives under lockdown?
The year is off to a rocky start, with the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic. Festivals, sporting events, concerts and car races are being cancelled and schools closed as we try to stop the spread.
There are no tumbleweeds rolling down the streets just yet, but more of us are keeping our distance from other people, whether by choice to minimise their chances of contracting the illness, because of work or because we have officially been placed under quarantine or lockdown.
All this adds up to a whole heap of people staying home and being bored out of their brains. Clinical psychologist Renee Mill says there’s a reason solitary confinement is used as a punishment in prisons. Brain scans confirm that humans need social interaction to thrive. Being deprived of social interaction in the long-term can cause significant damage.
Mill says isolation has serious ramifications. “When adults interact socially, their brains light up. We have social brains and what goes on in my brain will stimulate yours. If I am happy, it is contagious. You will also feel happier and both our brains will light up in the same regions. Without stimulation from others, the brain gets ‘lethargic’ and the same neural pathways will activate.
“In other words, if the individual is worried, they will ruminate and there is no break in the circuitry.”
In the absence of outside interaction and new things to think about, humans can experience a significant impact on their mental health, says Mill, and those with pre-existing mental health issues are the most vulnerable to the effects.
“Adults in short-term isolation will find their mood will lower, they will feel less energetic, and more bored and frustrated. Long-term isolation can lead to depression, anxiety, withdrawal, fear and paranoia.”
These hermit heroes are no strangers to the loner lifestyle.
London-born Tom Leppard marched to the beat of his own drum, sporting full-body leopard-spot tattoos. The former special forces soldier lived in a small, remote hut on the Isle of Skye for 20 years until 2008. His self-made accommodation had no furniture or electricity and a roof made of plastic sheets. He died in a nursing home in Inverness in 2016.