I’m worried about the mental health of the nation due to covid restrictions

[Maplebeth]

This applies from those to children to those in their early 20s.

My niece and nephew both graduated from University in the summer and have started new jobs remotely. They are obviously very thankful that they have been able to find work, but both are seriously struggling with depression, loneliness and aniexty due to not being able to meet co workers and feel like they cannot fully get to grips with their new roles. Learning from more experienced co workers is critical and this cannot be done remotely.

My children are both young and I worry about the effect this has on their education and their overall well being. I did work experience in schools (which led me to realise teacher training wasn’t for me) and the teachers with whom I spoke told me that children will just easily forget the information if they aren’t always being told and listening (for example when the kids go off for the summer holidays, they come back and struggle with what they were doing in class). My husband and I are both key workers, however I am able to work remotely so am trying to homeschool them but am struggling very much. My children are so devastated and miss their nana cousins school friends and auntie and uncles so much. I don’t know if I made the right decision not taking a key worker place. My husband is a police officer and members of the public are being increasingly hostile towards him and his colleagues for trying to do their jobs to protect the community and keep the public safe (and no they aren’t giving women with coffees fines).

I am normally a very positive, optimistic person but I am struggling to see how long this can go on for without some very damaging consequences to the mental health of our nation. We live up North and have been in covid restrictions for a very long time.

@Spiratedaway it is devastating. I live in an area that’s been affected by the recent floods. It’s sending people over the edge, lost your livelihood and your home I’m one year? Tragic

I agree with you @Maplebeth

@Sprockerdilerock so true. Coming from my own personal experience I’ve suffered from eating disorder before having my children, managed to recover to conceive and then went downward again after their birth. Prior to lockdown, I felt like I’d recovered. Then when the pandemic hit, I was consumed by it again as the only thing you could do was eat and exercise, restrict, binge, purge, repeat. I don’t want my DD and DS to pick up on these tendencies and see my behaviour as normal as I try to hide it from my kids as much as I can. Normally at a period like this, I could reach out for friends and family for support but everyone’s going through their own struggles so you don’t want to be a Burden

Mention mental health concerns guarantee someone will mention fucking resilience or the fucking war.

Mental health Act assessments have doubled in my area and you have to be very mentally unwell to need assessing under the Act so you are not wrong.

I totally agree, but you can't say it on here without people jumping in to say 'but what about the war?!'.

I agree OP. It's going to be a mental health catastrophe.

Our children's mental health and their future have been sacrificed.

My husband is a police officer and members of the public are being increasingly hostile towards him and his colleagues for trying to do their jobs

This is bang out of order and there's no justification for it.

The looming mass long term unemployment will also drive mental health issues. As work from home jobs start to offshored to cheaper countries and unskilled jobs are automated. They’ll be more poverty.

I agree completely OP, I know one person with a pre-existing condition which has been much worsened by their isolation and they are now under close supervision in the community. At a more general level, I feel it is not great for my teens, I worry about my students, we have a huge demand for wellbeing services, GPs and CAHMs are over-run and I have lots of friends whose children are really struggling, even if most of the time they are not severely ill. Friends the same, a couple quite depressed now, again most people coping but some not.

It's not great at all, that doesn't leave us many options as we can't immediately lift lockdown now and get wonderful mental health, I really hope that we start to prioritise mental health in terms of funding but I fear not. It's really that which is the biggest problem, services were stretched before the pandemic.

@User133847 it’s a disgrace to be honest. People getting aggressive for when they are trying to implement rules, then next minute people are shouting that they aren’t doing enough. Also, people coughing and spitting over my partner and colleagues saying that they have COVID. It makes my blood boil that they are not considered on bar with NHS staff for vaccines. They still have to enforce the law and arrest someone regardless if they have COVID and are self isolating or not. And the PPE they have are just the blue paper masks - the same masks that aren’t medical grade.

[quote WalrusWife]My grandma’s father was at Dunkirk and saw horrific sights. There was no counselling then. 1 week on leave at home then back on duty. He struggled with alcoholism and what would now be called PTSD his entire life. Millions of people suffered in the war. It wasn’t talked about or treated, they were left to get on with it but it didn’t mean they all lived happy lives.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/stories-48528841[/quote]
More men died of suicide after the Falklands than died in the war. It's now true of some more recent wars as well.

I'm also a police officer and I can tell you with conviction that you are right to be worried.

We are getting suicides every single day. Last set I had to attend 3 deaths in a set of 6 shifts, which is unheard of. We don't have enough staff for someone else to be sent other than me and that's what it is like force wide at the moment. It is just horrendous.

Excellent point from @Empressofthemundane, that today’s children are the ones we will need to carry the country when we are all old. We can hardly expect cooperation after the way they have been sidelined.

I am so sad to read the stories on this thread detailing mental health difficulties due to isolation and restrictions. We have tough times ahead when poverty becomes worse.

It’s a huge overgeneralisation to say the nation’s mental health is suffering. Some people are not coping particularly well, that’s true. But many people are coping fine, and fir a lot of people, including children, their mental health has significantly improved because of lockdown. I know mine has improved massively

@WalrusWife

The looming mass long term unemployment will also drive mental health issues. As work from home jobs start to offshored to cheaper countries and unskilled jobs are automated. They’ll be more poverty.

I live in a region that suffered terribly from unemployment in the 80s during the recession under Thatcher (and it was bad enough in the 70s). A generation condemned to life on the dole with no jobs anyway unless they 'got on their bike' to somewhere like London.

There was a huge mental health impact back then as a result and heroin, which was a novel drug here at the time, became widespread as it was cheap to get and people used it to numb themselves from the boredom and their situation. I suppose at least nowadays there's more distractions (internet, games consoles, social media etc) which aren't always a good thing either.

In fact this lockdown reminds me of that grim time and the prospect of it continuing if and when the jobs crisis hits. Then there's Brexit on top. If you've lost your livelihood this year then Covid isn't your main concern.

@Stationfork police officers have seriously been forgotten about in this pandemic, everyone praises nhs workers and care workers. But what about the police officers who are trying day in and day out to protect the most vulnerable in the community and the sights they are seeing on a daily basis which are a direct fall out of COVID restrictions such as addiction suicide domestic abuse just to name a few. It’s tragic. Thank you for your service.

@Rowenasemolina I’m glad to hear that you are doing better. Can I ask what about the new restrictions has lead to your mental health improving?

It's a really unnatural way to exist. It's a ticking time bomb. There will be massive repercussions from this which will last generations.

It grieves me how easily our children's education has been scrapped, how their future has been so casually destroyed. They will be the longterm losers out of all of this. They've been thrown under the bus.

[quote Maplebeth]@User133847 it’s a disgrace to be honest. People getting aggressive for when they are trying to implement rules, then next minute people are shouting that they aren’t doing enough. Also, people coughing and spitting over my partner and colleagues saying that they have COVID. It makes my blood boil that they are not considered on bar with NHS staff for vaccines. They still have to enforce the law and arrest someone regardless if they have COVID and are self isolating or not. And the PPE they have are just the blue paper masks - the same masks that aren’t medical grade.[/quote]
The way this government have treated the police (and going back to the disastrous cuts) is a disgrace,

And the way the country treats them in general.

I agree OP. It’s grim out there, I shudder when I think of the collective damage this is doing to all of our mental health.

Only time will tell, and it’s not going to be pretty.
Me personally I’m as tough as old boots!! Seriously as resilient as they come, but even I’m struggling now. Part of it is seeing the effects daily in the area that I live. I live on a council estate and it feels like a knife edge out there. Constant police chases, and raised voices etc. It has never been a lively estate, but it most certainly is now.

Ten minutes down the road is a really affluent area where I walk my dog. It’s nice and quiet, but no one smiles or says hello anymore when you walk past.

I work in a school and the atmosphere is equivalent to that of a morgue. The keyworker kids can’t be having much fun at all, and to be honest they look miserable. They pick up on the mood of staff for sure.

This is truly going to change people and comparing it to the bloody Holocaust is absurd. Those people were scarred for life.

I know a lot of people will be suffering but it's hard to gauge how widespread this is. Out of all the people I know, I don't know anyone who is genuinely struggling. They may be a bit fed up sometimes but by and large fine.

@Rowenasemolina

It’s a huge overgeneralisation to say the nation’s mental health is suffering. Some people are not coping particularly well, that’s true. But many people are coping fine, and fir a lot of people, including children, their mental health has significantly improved because of lockdown. I know mine has improved massively

It’s a huge overgeneralisation to say for a lot of people, including children, their mental health has significantly improved because of lockdown. In fact, I work with kids, and I can’t name one who would say that.

@anxiousalpaca agreed. Even on our work meetings, everyone looks and talks like they are miserable and totally fed up. And that’s just the ones that have their camera on...

@Maplebeth same with ours. I honestly dread our weekly meetings sometimes as it just feels there’s nothing to be positive about. We do bring our pets in to cheers us up though