Mental cost of virus lockdown mounts
For more than 200 days, the citizens of Buenos Aires have lived in lockdown. Yet despite enduring one of the world’s longest quarantines, Argentina on Monday became just the fifth to reach one million confirmed cases of COVID-19.
With the end still not in sight, residents of the capital are counting not just the financial cost of the pandemic but the deep psychological one, too.
An initial 10- day general national quarantine was decreed by the Argentine government on March 20, but it was later extended to weeks, then months.
While restrictions were lifted for large parts of the country in June, for residents of Buenos Aires and its metropolitan region, home to 40 per cent of the country’s population, those 10 days became seven uninterrupted months of lockdown.
The economic consequences of such prolonged restrictions are severe and small business owners are among the groups hardest hit.
“When the quarantine came, I had to close my business completely. There came a time when I owed seven months of rent, six months of electricity, six months of gas, and union and accounting fees,” says Daniel Aponte, whose bar in Lanus, a neighbourhood of Greater Buenos Aires, is now open but only for outdoor service on pavement tables.
“It’s a desperate situation because we’re very much in debt and we’re going to have to work a lot and wait a long time to catch up, and since we don’t know what’s going to happen next, it’s a terrible uncertainty, which has affected me disproportionately in terms of my state of mind,” he says.
This situation is not unique to Aponte. The country had more than 600,000 small businesses before lockdown, of which, according to a July report by the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services, more than 42,000 had permanently closed.
More than 20 per cent of Argentina’s population work in informal jobs and, although companies are officially prohibited from laying off workers because of COVID-19, the collapse of these businesses has left hundreds of thousands of Argentines out of work.
According to a study by Buenos Aires University’s psychology observatory, depression has increased five- fold, three out of four Argentines have sleep problems and one in two have had to stop their daily activities to preserve their health.
“When compulsory isolation is prolonged, chronic stress begins, which is linked to anxiety disorders, depression and addictions,” says Patricio Cristobal Rey, head of the teaching and research division of the mental health department at the university. “These symptoms also generate sleep problems and various physical ailments.”
The situation is not aided by the grim irony that, despite Argentina being one of the countries with the highest number of psychologists in the world, few people can access the treatment they need.
The consequences for those stuck at home can be severe. “This whole situation has given me an arrhythmia and I have to use a Holter ( portable heart monitor) to control it,” says Candela Robledo, a 20- year- old who lives in Buenos Aires. “I also have trouble sleeping, because I have trouble breathing due to this problem.”
While quarantine was eased slightly in September, socializing remained limited to outdoor public spaces and running permitted only at certain times. Residents talk of the numbing effect that such isolation brings.
“Having more than 200 days without pleasant stimuli, such as social meetings, trips or outings, affected my motivation … even more so knowing that the economic situation in my context is terrifying,” says Azul Weimann, who is in the third year of studying to be a nutritionist. In addition to sleeping problems, she has also begun to suffer from an eating disorder. “I have lost my appetite,” she says. “I eat only once a day, not because I don’t have enough food, but because I don’t want to eat.”
Children have also suffered. In the wider metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, those aged under 15 can only go out with their parents to go shopping. In the city itself, which is governed independently, the restrictions are less stringent, allowing parents to go out with their children twice a week, for a limited time, and on weekends. Despite this, contact with classmates and teachers has been totally lost for more than half a year.
“My son has just turned 15 and although he is a very good student and always communicates with his classmates, lately he does not have the same enthusiasm,” says Gabriela Vianco.
“He is also afraid that his father or I will go out to work. Last week we started going to work for a few hours and he sent me a message saying that he missed us.
“So we decided not to leave him alone and to go to work one day each, although he doesn’t like that either because he’s afraid we’ll get sick.”
Psychologists point out that many people still cannot get the treatment they need and say that, as lockdown eases, the mental cost will be harder to tally than the economic one.