Mental health – the silent pandemic

2020 was an unprecedented year. We experienced a drastic change in our daily routine, and an overnight upheaval in our freedom, luxuries, social fabric, even livelihoods.

2021 is level 2 of this calamity wherein we are witnessing a closer impact to human life and humanity. India has been hit harder this year and we have seen personal impact in almost every family due to the deadly second wave of corona. The virus is mutating rapidly and our readiness to handle this pandemic has fallen short despite having had a year’s head start, even with burden of our dense population.

 

As a people manager in an IT company, I’ve been privy to challenges faced by many team members in 2020 as well as 2021, across multiple cities. The horror of this year is unspeakable. I had given up following news in newspapers and TV long ago. I am now scared to check the same on social media. Whatsapp has become the bane of my existence – I hear of so many +ve cases of known people, deaths of those I knew, as well as suffering of people due to scarcity of life-saving resources. And then there has always been the impact to several industries, decline of entire businesses, loss of jobs, insecurity in work and life.

 

No amount of yoga, breathing exercises and meditation is able to contain the anxiety and anger anymore. Tempers are flaring at the drop of a hat; people are either walking on tiptoe with family, friends, neighbors and colleagues, or they are getting into verbal or physical spats. Suppressed emotion, intolerable grief, constant anxiety is giving rise to depression and mental health issues. Children too are caught up in it now. Everyone is so busy trying to cope and survive that it’s difficult to be there for others anymore. I read an article where even the mental health experts and counselors were experiencing fatigue due to the sheer number of cases they were handling daily.

 

The enormity of this historic disaster in the intellectual 21^st century cannot be denied anymore. The collective human ego has been crushed into oblivion; our so-called progress and limitless knowledge have failed us when we need it the most. The facade of sophistication has been removed and the ugly faces of many have come to the fore (nothing to do with lack of salons).

 

There are still those that find fulfillment in helping the less fortunate, praying and following the social distancing rules. But am wondering if their numbers are enough to sustain this species or we are on the brink of witnessing the extinction of the homo sapiens. If the disease does not take us, will our mental health issues destroy us through suicides and general anarchy brought on by this calamity? Will the disruption in formal education of the young ones cause them to rebel and self-sabotage? 

 

Survival is the name of the game currently, but what comes next? Surely, it’s a long road ahead to recovery. Or maybe the human species itself is mutating due to this pandemic and we will never get back to whatever felt normal before. The outside world may get restored to normalcy eventually, but our internal landscape will be transformed for eternity.

 

This situation reminds me of this difference between Hell and Heaven-

 

There is a kitchen where soup is prepared in huge cauldrons and the only tool available to drink the soup are long-handled spoons. People who had landed in Hell were standing around the steaming pots, starving but unable to serve themselves the soup due to spoons being too long to reach their mouths.

 

The people who were in Heaven did not give up. Someone thought of an idea. If I take soup in the spoon and point it to my neighbor’s mouth, he can eat it at least. Soon, everyone stood in a circle, fed their neighbor and survived the ordeal.

Let us try to hang on to our sanity for as long as we can. Each of us will have to find his/her own way of coping but know that we are all in it together. Let us control the judgements, the expectations and the angst. Let us try to find catharsis through non-destructive ways and support each other along the way.

 

God bless.