Experts: Mental health suffering amid COVID
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s likely not a person alive who isn’t feeling emotionally and mentally depleted, said Dr. Andre Newfield, chair of psychiatry at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport.
“I think ‘zapped’ is a good but gentle word” for how people are feeling, he said. “I think anybody who isn’t feeling that way is operating in fantasy or denial.”
As a surge in COVID cases continues to pummel the state, Newfield and other mental health experts said it’s clear that the gut punch of worry, anger and frustration that comes with each new wave of the illness is taking a brutal toll on people’s mental well-being.
“It’s hard, because we had these expectations that things were getting better and now they’re getting worse,” said Dr. Peter Morgan, chair of psychiatry at Bridgeport hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Mental health has been a concern throughout the pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many Americans reported adverse mental health within the first few months of the crisis.
In a study released in August 2020, in June of that year, 40.9 percent of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, including symptoms of anxiety disorder or depressive disorder (30.9 percent), symptoms of a trauma and stressor-related disorder related to the pandemic (26.3 percent), and having started or increased substance use to cope with stress or emotions related to COVID-19 (13.3 percent).
Local experts said, as the pandemic continues to rage, people are finding themselves frustrated, scared, and often hopeless. Morgan said those who were already battling depression, substance use problems or other issues before the pandemic hit might have found those issues exacerbated by this prolonged period of stress and uncertainty.
But it’s likely that everyone, whether they had mental health issues before the pandemic or not, is finding their mental health affected in some way, said Dr. Kento Yasuhara, associate professor of psychology at the University of New Haven.
“Many people are dealing with not only the stress and fear of the virus itself, but also having to deal with the stress of choosing activities based on if it is ‘worth the risk,’” he said. “Having to make decisions that have no ‘right’ answer is tough for many people, as there is no satisfaction that you did the right thing.”
One of the big reasons for the mental depletion people are feeling is that, in addition to the stress of the pandemic, people also need to do their jobs, raise their children and face other everyday stresses, Yasuhara said.
“We all deal with everyday life stressors, which feels somewhat like a sprint,” he said. “Chronic stress is more like a marathon. The issue during the past two years is that we’ve all been running sprints during a marathon, as we’ve been trying to deal with our everyday life stressors with the chronic stressor of the pandemic as the backdrop.”
Newfield had a different analogy to describe trying to keep mentally healthy in these draining times.
“This is one battle of a war and we have to keep going,” he said.
His theory is that spikes in anxiety and other mental health concerns follow the rise and fall of virus activity. The good part of this, Newfield said, is that people’s mental health will improve as the current surge abates. The bad part is that those same issues will arise again when a new wave hits.
Another issue is that the ongoing undercurrent of anxiety most people are facing might make it tougher to detect when there is a serious problem, Newfield said.
“This might be more difficult at this point, because it’s hard to imagine anyone who is aware of what is going on not being more on edge or more down,” he said.
But the concern is when these emotions tend to overwhelm someone’s everyday functioning. He and other experts said to look out for changes in sleeping patterns or appetite, or the loss of the ability to function.