Mental health in quarantine, anxiety and depression

16 Jun Mental health in quarantine, anxiety and depression

Mental health in quarantine, anxiety and depression.

I hope everybody is doing well. Last week I was talking to you about mental health during quarantine. I told you about certain excesses and how important it is to find ways to limit the drive and ask for professional help when you just can’t reach this goal by your own. Today

I’m going to talk to you about other mental health symptoms that have exacerbated during quarantine.

I will discuss anxiety and depression. It is a fact that during the quarantine, our daily life changed, the structure of our reality fell apart. As subjects of speech, we build and organize our reality. This calm us down, give us emotional stability and also allow us to plan short and long term goals. We love being able to check the weather forecast and know how the weather will be in the next 10 days. We also have calendars and schedules to organize our social and work activities. Therefore, the dismemberment of reality and not knowing how things will be for us and the society in general, when we will return to what we call normal have left us without support and produced emotional and psychological effects.

This uncertainty has caused great anguish, great anxiety in people, especially in those who have a great need for controlling what is happening around them or knowing exactly what is going to happen. There are people who need to have extreme control of their reality and when this does not happen, anguish gets exacerbated and turns into anxiety.

Let’s agree that in life one never has full control neither the certainty of what’s going to happen, but the whole coronavirus situation created unprecedented issues and challenges to the whole world. Even many mental health professionals are speaking of a generalized post -traumatic stress disorder in society caused not only by the uncertainty of the situation but also for its duration, the drastic changes produced in reality and in the interaction with others. Obviously we are realizing that there will be a before and after covid-19 for all of us.

In the cases of depression, the impact of all the situations unleashed by the pandemic on the emotional, social and economic areas must be considered. There are people who have been completely isolated for months, others have lost their jobs, many have lost family members or friends. These are all factors that might lead to depression, and of course there will be those who have more resources than others to deal with these situations. I am referring not only to financial resources but the subjective position in life of each one of them and what they have to rely themselves on. Emotional and psychological resources are extremely important to deal with loss and mourning.

It is essential to set up short term and long term plans. Planning is a way of supporting yourself in a reality that is dismembered, a way of project yourself into the future. Of course, some will have to have several plans in the face of uncertainty, or more short term plans. The important thing is to find a way to project yourself in time, which will allow you to create an imaginary support and get out of stagnations.

We must differentiate when a symptom is manageable and when it ends up transforming into what commands a person. These are the situations in which functioning is lost. When someone spends all day in bed, when they do not bathe, when they are not engaged in their work or when they do not take care of their children, these are indications that things have reached a point where professional help is imperative.

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Those who are experiencing extreme depression or who have family members or friends experiencing profound depressions need to consult with a therapist. If the depression is severe, the help of a psychiatrist is often required to assess the need of psychotropic medications. When a person is no longer functioning, they must first step out of the vicious cycle that does not allow them to do the basic things in life, otherwise depression becomes even harder to manage. Medication might help a lot in these situations. However, we will have to evaluate what are the best options for each individual in particular. Well, I hope you have an excellent week and that today’s talk has helped you somehow.

This may interest you: Podcast: Coronavirus and Uncertainty “When Toilet Paper talks about us”