To think there's a whole mental health aftermath to the pandemic which isn't really being addressed

[crackerscandycanes]

Just looking at people I know, people seem to be really struggling at the minute, and of course the cost of living is a big part and all the bad news etc, but I also think that some of it is the aftermath of the pandemic and everything we had to go through being locked indoors for all that time. It seems as if we're not supposed to mention it now or reflect, but I think there's a lot of mental health issues on the back of it.

Did they lose their minds or just enjoy being nasty?

I still feel a huge amount of resentment and its not going away

Probably the latter for many tbh

I've just been through horrific postnatal anxiety too, I'm sorry you experienced that 💜

Did they lose their minds or just enjoy being nasty

They went proper nuts. It's inexplicable otherwise. The viciousness, reporting neighbours,family members,friends, the cries to have the army on the streets(wtf?!?) , the insistence we need more rules,more control,more freedoms taken away. From way too many posters. In fact, a majority of posters. Even posters who had previously been pretty reasonable and balanced.

Collective paranoia and hysteria in a "burn the witches " style. Ofc some just enjoyed being dicks, but the numbers didn't add up to be just that.

Covid wasn’t particularly hard for me. I’ve never had any friends so I’m used to being lonely. Even now I don’t go out because I have nobody to go out with. I don’t remember the last time I had a conversation with anyone except my parents, husband or kids. I’m struggling significantly more with the cost of living crisis than I ever did with Covid.

As a mental health professional one of the major problems is that the majority of NHS MH services are for moderate to severe MH problems. We have very clear guidelines of what that means but the general public usually misinterpret what is mild to moderate MH and get upset / frustrated/ angry when they are rejected for not meeting the criteria.
In Scotland over the last few years therehas been millions spent of MH services particularly for Primary mental health services in GP practices along with a roll out of LIAM( low intensity anxiety management) within schools.
Most people will experience and recover from MH in a natural way without any professional input.

This feels very gaslight-y to me. There is so little mental health support in Scotland! The criteria are a joke. You have to be attempting suicide essentially and even then…What support there is is often of poor quality, not up to date, sexist, probably other -ists too and not joined up. It has been that way for decades. But it’s much easier to blame the public than accept just how bad service are.

Heartbreaking
and still ongoing -so scary

I think it was bad for everyone that there was so little mainstream political questioning of restrictions from outside the right. We would all have benefitted from centrist and leftist critical perspectives being articulated, but it never happened. Or not until very late in the day anyway.

YANBU. I think the big difference from previous pandemics was both the public health messaging (in terms of extremity and frequency of exposure) and the relentless media coverage. I don’t think you can underestimate the impact of these on people’s mental health and it’s not something previous generations would have been exposed to.

Illegally taking my child and his friend to "exercise" together in a swampy park in January, while half their class were permitted an education in a classroom.
At least the playgrounds weren't padlocked up for 3.5 months that time 🙄

Feeling like a constant failure for being unable to teach my children myself; professionals who've worked with them due to their SENs have agreed it was a hiding to nothing. No other social interaction for 6 months because of the restrictions, both legal and others' self-imposed extras.

I burned out of anger, and the inert lethargy of 2021 has passed, but I still don't feel emotions like excitement. Not 100% Covid related as there's been several dollops of other life-shit this year on top, but basically don't assume that anything nice will happen until it does actually happen because there's a 75% chance that it'll get fucked up.

I'm sad I never saw MiL again. We attempted to see her in 2021 in a shit show of changing travel restrictions, but care home restrictions meant the last time the DCs and I could see her was late 2019 and social isolation, and neglected healthcare accelerated her decline and made the final 28 months of her life much poorer than they needed to be.

I've come off fairly lightly compared to so, so many, but it doesn't mean my feelings aren't valid.

You can not turn society off and play with the switch and expect it to be consequence free. But pointing that out in 2020 and much of 2021 just resulted in being called a Granny Killer and Selfish.

I was a lifelong Labour voter before all this. After their calls for longer harsher harder lockdowns i will never vote for them again. To compound the issue they have gaslighted about it since and said they didnt

Illegally taking my child and his friend to "exercise" together in a swampy park in January, while half their class were permitted an education in a classroom

Yes, that part was rather a lowlight. I made a point of arranging as many illegal social events for my children as possible during that period, and was fucking proud of it too.

What support there is is often of poor quality, not up to date, sexist, probably other -ists too and not joined up.

This! After dc1 was born I was told I'd get better on my own because I'm "middle class, intelligent and articulate" by a psychiatrist. I was later diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and 7 years down the line, I'm far from the person I was pre children. Even more frustratingly, pre Covid I'd clawed myself back to a position where I thought I had a plan, wanted to retrain as a social worker, could cope with life and lockdown destroyed all that and I don't have the strength to do it again.

I think the big difference from previous pandemics was both the public health messaging
The government basically went “the only way we can persuade people to stay at home is to scare them”. So they did. With death tolls and news stories about people dying in overcrowded hospitals. But when they gave us the all clear, people had taken the scare stories so much to heart that they wouldn’t go out. Hence why the government had to waste money on incentives to entice us out again.

At least the playgrounds weren't padlocked up for 3.5 months that time
At the time I worked for the council. Playground closures were largely due to insurance companies withdrawing coverage. Because they were worried someone would sue for catching Covid from a playground. Seems crazy now!

Absolutely. The left had to be lockdowns and anyone raising harms got the far right abusive line. Ludicrous.

I think the big difference from previous pandemics was both the public health messaging
The government basically went “the only way we can persuade people to stay at home is to scare them”. So they did. With death tolls and news stories about people dying in overcrowded hospitals. But when they gave us the all clear, people had taken the scare stories so much to heart that they wouldn’t go out. Hence why the government had to waste money on incentives to entice us out again.

Yep. And now we all get to enjoy the consequences of that, as a society. People with existing conditions like anxiety and OCD were particularly fucked over. And it was a choice.

I used to cross myself when a hearse went by, I don't really know why, but I did.

Post lockdown, I look at them and feel jealous.

Someone mum knows just lost her 62 year old brother. I am sorry for the family of course, but he was miserable in lockdown, drank heavily - he was alone as none of his family would break the rules apparently - and I think he is better off. He had a massive heart attack. In the beginning, bubbles weren't allowed so he was just alone. I didn't know much about him, but his sister - mum's friend - was so paranoid she was washing her house keys. So he was very lonely and not the only person drinking heavily, I'm sure.

I can't drink heavily as my bladder is too small. Sorry for that overshare!. But I think it's a smoke, a scotch and bed for me now. I don't even like scotch but it's here and it's free!

good night to any anti lockdowners...we did our best to fight it and in the end, that's all any of us can do.

yes, without a doubt. I’m a Samaritan, and I’m always hearing that peoples mental health problems started with the pandemic, or they’ve got worse since, or it was never this bad before Covid etc.

@EmmaAgain22 please take care of yourself

There was a lot of difficulty in the lock downs. I know three people that killed themselves, my kids suffered.
The trauma of the lock downs for me was seeing how in a minority I was being against total state control of my body and my movements. I lost my faith in my countrymen. People would have gone along with locking up people with covid, forcing (useless) vaccinations on people, the army on the streets. I gave birth in a mask which I was only able to take off when I started to panic. The doctors all said “oh we’ve all had it anyway so it won’t make a difference”. I knew then the doctors were going along with a charade in a hospital. Madness. I trust no one now. Many of my friends who called me a conspiracy theorist now say the same things I was saying two years ago. But I can’t look at them the same. Thank you ADs you kept me sane

Absolutely correct about the gaslighting from the NHS….I’m a senior mental health practitioner in private practice and I (like many other self-employed practitioners) picked up a lot of slack caused by NHS/CAMHS practitioners ‘unable to work/see/speak with clients due to X’ or on furlough.
Strange how we self-employed practitioners kept on working through Covid yet many NHS /talk plus psychotherapists were apparently unable. How smug and unfeeling is that response?! I’m not referring here to mental health nurses who absolutely kept on going with inpatients but were overstretched.

I had teenagers actively self harming and suicidal arriving at my practice because being turned away by the NHS or being told to go to A&E or given an ‘app’. I ended up running free workshops (when the NHS staff couldn’t, even though it was allowed) and working for free just to help people. The NHS Talk Plus/CAMHS mental health provision is woeful and this smug, gaslighting response about ‘people not understanding the criteria’ is everything that is wrong with the NHS and why I don’t work in it.

There are thousands of people still suffering every single day with long covid. The mental health impact of that is just part of it.
It is never mentioned anywhere.

I imagine there will be significant mental health and other impacts in a few years when family members, friends, or oneself develops early onset Parkinson's as a result of Covid infection, which many in the field predict.

I gave birth in a mask which I was only able to take off when I started to panic.

That's horrific.