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  2021-06-27

  Pandemic lockdown gives a new opportunity towards homeless mental health. A study from Spain

  While the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered mental health, see https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/mental-health, I hope that there could be benefits to mental health as COVID rates around the world drop. It is now more convenient than ever to partake in counseling services from the comfort of your room, especially if you have social anxiety or pandemic anxiety. Unfortunately, statistics are not out as of March 2022 that demonstrate that mental health is improving with waning COVID rates, instead counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists seem busier than ever. While telehealth meetings are convenient, wait times and schedules are full of the backlog of people whose mental health was affected by the pandemic. I wanted to find an example of a positive outcome on mental health through COVID's global sweep, especially as COVID wanes. Attached is an example of a study in Spain that focused on a group of homeless in Spain that were in lockdown. "More than 60% of them presented mental disorders and within 8 weeks they were visited in person 2–3 times...Finally, 51.8% were linked to social and health care services and 37% to mental health resources, which can constitute a step forward in their reintegration and normalization." They argue that if it was not for COVID and these efforts, these homeless people may not have been diagnosed and helped. The paper concludes that this study is useful for the future because it shows how under immensely stressful situations, primary and secondary interventions worked. This can be repeated without a pandemic. While the pandemic was very stressful, it reaped some benefits such as a new focus on mental health, new methods of talking with trained professionals, and studied like this that show data of improving mental health in times of stress.