The other pandemic

Early this month, the Department of Health reported that the National Center for Mental Health had been receiving more calls from adolescents. The report, however, included that such distress calls had been on the rise from all age brackets since the beginning of the pandemic.

It’s the same all over the world. In the US, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data released in June 2021, “63 percent of young people reported experiencing substantial symptoms of anxiety and depression.” In Europe, a Cambridge University-published study has shown that these symptoms are more observable among the older populations, although it is disheartening that, increasingly, young adults, even students, are also falling prey to loneliness, which can lead, as the research has pointed out, to “a sixto 10-fold increase in risk for worsened depressed mood, anxiety symptoms, and sleep problems.”

It’s all par for the course during a pandemic when physical distancing, social isolation, mobility restrictions, and constant media exposure to COVID-19 are normal and even necessary. Along with the elderly and those who live alone, older teens and young adults are the hardest hit because, just as they are beginning to build a world outside of their families, that world and its many possibilities are indefinitely on hold.

There’s a call for governments in many countries to intervene with social care policies to mitigate the long-term consequences of increased loneliness, such as worsened mental health problems. A Harvard Graduate School of Education-led research recommends a robust social infrastructure, including national, local, and community campaigns to increase awareness of the importance of social ties. Even here in the Philippines, there are more government, non-government, and private organizations addressing mental health than ever before.

Alas, there is not enough help in this world for lonely people. While it is not considered a specific mental health condition, loneliness does, especially when prolonged, affect general health — physical, mental, and emotional.

On your own, there are many ways to address loneliness, such as keeping active or engaging in meaningful causes.

But sometimes it’s all in the disposition. Train yourself to find joy in as many ordinary things as possible, to see the silver lining in every dark cloud, to see the friend in everyone, even in yourself.

Learn to accept that many things in life are 100 percent beyond your control. Just as it is in you as a human to succumb to the worst of circumstances, as happens to the best of us, it is also in you as a human to soar above them.

If you hate this and you hate that, if the only things that make you happy are things you can’t do every day, like weekends or vacations or the company of friends, it’s only logical you will be miserable most of the time. Protect yourself from yourself by keeping fear, helplessness, hopelessness, resentment, envy, anger on a leash and replace them with a sense of hope, a sense of wonder, and positivity.

Allow everyday things to make you feel alive and you may be happy, sometimes worried and saddled with troubles — that’s life — but still capable of being at peace and full of hope.

If all else fails, call a mental health professional.