Mental Health & COVID-19

Focusing on the importance of mental health during quarantine.

April 2, 2020

Megan Douglas

Megan Douglas

text story

English Home & Family Life

English Health & Wellness

mental health

quarantine

anxiety

disorder

depression

Mental Health

04/02/2020

10/04/2020

1/15/2021

10/05/2021

04/02/2020

During this time, I've realized that everyone's focus has shifted tremendously to staying healthy by washing your hands, not touching your face, and staying away from people. I truly believe that this virus is very serious and the entire world is affected in one way or another. But I've also realized that not many people have stopped to think about how one's mental health could be affected as well. As of today, there are no studies that show that there is a lot of connection between the virus and everyone's mental health, probably because it is too soon to determine. But based off of personal experience, I've noticed that many people rely on social interation and being close to somebody in order to battle the ongoing mental health condition that they suffer from everyday. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the people that don't have good home lives. There are many people that can't wait to go to work everyday because they get to escape a reality that may be detrimental to there well being. Both physical and mental. With many businesses being closed down, it is hard for these people to have that escape. What happens then? Having an anxiety disorder is very difficult to deal with when surving a pandemic like this due to the fact that they wake up everyday and seeing more and more cases. People who suffer from anxiety and/or depression are stuck in there home and the only way that they could reduce this pain was to go out and socialize or go to the gym so that they are able to distract themsleves from what happens in their everyday life. I do realize that they're are many ways that someone with an anxiety disorder can help themselves but what if their mind isn't strong enough? What if the only way they were survivng was being in a large group of people or maybe going to the gym a couple of times during the week?

Battling these mental health conditions can be so diificult to do on your own. Sometimes people get caught up in their own mind and being isolated just leaves one with their own thoughts. It's a nonstop battle that one must try to overcome. The lack of sleep that they may get because they are up all night trying to figure out what is making their heart beat so fast. Or the fact that their elderly loved ones are at such a high risk in terms of contracting this virus, that you can't even give them a hug. It's very difficult to not think about how things used to be before all of this and what things will be like in the future. It is hard to live in the moment when in the moment there is nothing but chaos that is happening around you. I feel very deeply about mental health during this pandemic because it seems to be very overlooked in many ways.

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