Mental health is in its boots. Brexit and Covid-19 are large contributing factors on why mental health has taken a steep decline. Continually dealing with mental health issues, I know how mental health works.
I also know how it presents, how much mental health is ignored, primarily because we fail to recognise that how we feel has anything to do with mental health. Mental health is affecting those already living with pre-existing mental health conditions, exacerbated by social exclusion and Covid-19 lockdown.
Covid-19 and Mental Health
Prior to Covid-19, mental health services were already under strain. In January the BMA published its report calling on the Government to address the issues raised in the report urgently, as many of the problems highlighted in the report at that time, risked getting worse as a direct result of Covid-19. (Source: https://www.bma.org.uk)
Addressing Mental Health
We need to be true to ourselves, we should be addressing our issues. We don't all have the idyllic childhood, or life and when any issue isn't dealt with, it can turn into a mental health concern.
I am also under no illusion of the life I’ve lived, and where I find myself mentally in Brexit and Covid-19. I like others continue to be affected by the UK Government’s decisions that have left me in a vulnerable mental state. I am now locked in my home due to lifted restrictions. It is important we are truthful about just how vulnerable we are with our mental health.
Accepting we deal with Mental Health
To deny we haven’t been affected by Covid-19, is to deny our lives matter and it does. And getting on with life in Covid-19, isn’t really getting on. Freedom of movement is coming at a cost of catching the virus.
We are still living in the pandemic, being double jabbed doesn’t guarantee our safety and with provisions already lifted, we are continuing to put ourselves and our loved ones at risk. That reinforces other ‘emotional’ mental health stuff.
Vulnerabilities and Mental Health
Anything we deal with reinforces just how vulnerable we are and why mental health issues are never far away. It's also not helping that restrictions that were in place to help us adjust into Covid-19 life, are now lifted and that has made each of us even more vulnerable. It is time for us to take stock and say: 'I need to change how I feel and work with my mental health.’
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It's not surprising that people's mental health is suffering right now. It is unimaginable that any western country would be living through a pandemic. Wasn't that always something we left 3rd world countries to deal with?
To some extent we seem to have adapted to live around the virus (but in many cases we're ignoring the fact we are living in a pandemic, by ignoring the very things that keep us safe) which makes no sense.
But around mental health, I suspect we will be dealing with the effects on our mental health long after the virus is gone.
Thanks. Yes, I agree. None of what we have to deal around Covid-19 makes any sense. And mental health has taken a knock.
I tend to write about what hits the headlines, but also what I deal with. Yes, your point about 3rd world countries.
Lifestyle is very much to do with what we're dealing with now. And whilst 3rd world countries have to deal with famine, and they have less than us.
If Covid-19 teaches us one thing, (and we need to take it on board) it's that we all need to do more to look after ourselves, each other and the world.
Once we start doing that mental health will improve.