According to several recent studies, the mental health of Americans is worse now than it has ever been. Here is the latest:
One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they've considered suicide in the past month because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data that paints a bleak picture of the nation's mental health during the crisis.Question: is this a good argument for re-opening schools and some businesses, or not?
The data also flags a surge of anxiety and substance abuse, with more than 40 percent of those surveyed saying they experienced a mental or behavioral health condition connected to the Covid-19 emergency. The CDC study analyzed 5,412 survey respondents between June 24 and 30.
7 comments:
Perhaps they are anxious and depressed because of the plague itself, and not because they can't go to school or shop?
For every student who's depressed that they can't be in school, I bet there's another one who's thrilled, including when it involves remote classes.
"Question: is this a good argument for re-opening schools and some businesses, or not?"
It's FAR more of an argument for giving out larger stimulus checks. Any uptick in suicides we see is going to have very little to do with being cooped up at home, and far more to do with being unemployed and unable to pay rent, buy groceries, etc.
Being stuck at home is a bummer, but futilely trying to live off not nearly enough money, fearing a looming potential eviction, not having enough to eat... those are the sorts of things that drive people to want to take their own lives, not an extended inability to go to the movies / beach / a friend's house, et cetera.
"It's FAR more of an argument for giving out larger stimulus checks. Any uptick in suicides we see is going to have very little to do with being cooped up at home, and far more to do with being unemployed and unable to pay rent, buy groceries, etc."
This is kind of what I thought. People are worried their families are falling apart. Now that businesses have opened back up and the special unemployment subsidy has run out, how are single parents supposed to work and not lose their jobs if school (and day care) is closed?
Business reopening, school closures, unemployment benefits, moratoriums on layoffs and evictions -- all these things are connected, yet no one has a plan that takes into account these connections. Dominoes.
That is a good argument to prove how the whole strategy against Covid19 was badly designed and largely failed in many countries. Of course weak societies subject to unemployment and poverty are more subject to anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses; but in the end everybody is, mainly because of the politics of frightening and panicking created by media and opinion makers.
Now it's becoming visible that the most important indeed was a effcient, quick, capable public health service, all efforts should have gone that way to prevent/reduce deaths, because the virus spread is unstoppable; and general use of masks, which only too late was implemented and still with lots of exceptions.
Social distancing and home confinement are the easy, unexpensive measures that punish citizens and exempt authorities' responsability; they are also the most depressing measures, mainly for those elders that live alone and helpless.
So yes: the strategies must be rethinked and the pandemic must be dedramatized: in Human history, it's a normal event, one that has been always overcome, and never did we have better tools for that.
It is absolutely about the lockdowns. Most of the people I know are either retired, or working jobs that are essential, and are not facing financial crisis. But I have been watching several of them slowly deteriorate mentally, particularly those who live alone. They are becoming depressed and increasingly irrational. I just had a meetup at a park with one of them, because from her emails I was really worried about her. She's still going to work all week, but she's been super-careful about social-distancing outside work because she works with old people.
My own parents observed the lockdown for the first three weeks or so, and then both decided, basically, "we're old, and anything could kill us at any time-- a fall in the shower, a heart attack, whatever-- so it's not worth spending months or years self-isolating." So they're done with it. The stress of isolation was not worth it to them: they'd rather take the risk of dying of the virus.
@JustPeachy
The thing is, they're not just taking the risk of dying - they're risking being an asymptomatic carrier and killing other people who they come in contact with.
It's like with seat belts in cars - yes, wearing a seatbelt makes it more likely that YOU will live, but choosing not to wear one actually puts OTHER people in danger, because it makes it much likelier for you to be thrown from the vehicle in a collision, which in turn creates road hazards as people swerve to avoid hitting you, or can even turn your corpse into a missile which flies through someone else's windshield and harms them directly.
Or even better - it's like smoking. Sure, if you don't care about your own health, you might argue that you should be allowed to smoke - but it also harms everyone around you, and that's not something you have a right to choose for them.
@Verloren:
In case you're wondering why I don't respond to your comments anymore, it's because you don't read mine. It's deeply frustrating trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't actually listen, projects their own assumptions onto me, and then responds to those assumptions instead of what I actually said. If you were curious, you could have asked for clarification.
But you didn't. You assumed.
So it's not worth trying to have a discussion here, or even an argument. Back to ignore.
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