COVID-19’s overlooked health toll
When the history of the great COVID-19 pandemic is written, it will record that this horrific illness devastated millions of people’s mental as well as physical health. As deadly and debilitating as the coronavirus could be to the body, the fear, stress and isolation it brought with it disrupted how we think, feel and relate to others. And unlike the incredible scientific efforts that produced drugs to prevent COVID, there is no vaccine to alleviate its impact on the human mind.
The World Health Organization confirmed the gravity of the situation in March when it reported that the pandemic had triggered a 25 per cent increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. Canada mirrored the trend and then some, with a recent Angus Reid survey revealing that 54 per cent of Canadians say their mental health has worsened during the pandemic. Closer to home, Waterloo Region provides a microcosm for a side of the pandemic that has received far too little attention but surely deserves more.
Over the course of this two-year pandemic, crisis calls across the local mental-health network (which includes both this region and Wellington County) surged by 40 per cent. Unfortunately, the soaring demand was not matched by an increase in the supply of trained mental-health-care workers to deal with it. There simply wasn’t enough provincial funding to make it happen, according to Helen Fishburn, CEO of Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington.
And so today there are 3,670 people on the local wait list to receive mental-health and addictions care. Fortunately, there’s still immediate help for someone in an emergency who calls a 24-hour service line. But if you need help for psychiatry services, addiction treatment, to access mental health and addictions housing or the eating disorder program, you take your place in line. You wait. You suffer. And that’s not good enough in a country supposedly committed to an effective public health-care system.
It’s hardly surprising that Fishburn believes the provincial government shortchanges mental-health services. Or that the current Ontario election campaign is the time to convince whoever forms the next government to do better. Fishburn makes a compelling case for action. The first step in changing an unacceptable status quo, however, would be a greater acknowledgement by everyone that the pandemic has been a game-changer. If you’re hoping to be an MPP after the June 2 provincewide vote, please take note.
Add up the mental toll exacted by repeated lockdowns, job losses, financial uncertainty, home-schooling children, the fear of what COVID could do and the grief that comes from witnessing what it has done. Living through the pandemic was like spending two years in a pressure cooker where ever more heat was being applied. Many of us spent more time alone, unable to go to a workplace, meet friends, eat in a restaurant or sit in a movie theatre. A lot of us stayed connected through laptops and cellphones — even as we increasingly realized social media can be a pernicious, alienating force.
There is ample evidence our society is angrier and more divided that just a few years ago — though how much that can be blamed on our polarized political parties as opposed to the pandemic is a moot point. Disagreements over vaccine- and masking-mandates heightened pandemic tensions. People were unsettled by these unsettled times — and that included the younger generation. A survey of 1,074 youths in Waterloo Region last year found that while the pandemic raged, half of teenagers aged 16 to 18 felt lonely and isolated. Compared to younger kids, these older teens tended felt less positive about their mental or physical health — and less likely to get the help they required from their family.
There is consolation in knowing that the physical health-care emergency from the pandemic gradually appears to be coming to an end. The mental health emergency will take longer to pass. We realize there are a lot of issues fighting for attention in the Ontario election campaign, along with a lot of expensive promises being tossed out. Surely addressing the lingering mental-health harms caused by COVID-19 deserves a higher place on the party platforms and public agenda than it currently occupies.