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I did not want to write another post on the coronavirus disease COVID-19. Hundreds of posts have already been written on every aspect of the disease—washing your hands, boosting your immune system, doing self-quarantine, etc.

Yet, I feel I need to share what I have observed and learned during the last few weeks through my interactions with people with mental health issues (particularly and ). In this post, I would like to give voice to some of their concerns. (Needless to say, identifying information about these individuals has been changed to protect their privacy.)

What do people fear about the disease COVID-19? There is the disgusting nature of flu-like diseases (perhaps related to toilet paper panic buying), the worrisome shortness of breath symptoms, fear of not getting proper care, fear of hospitals and doctors in protective gear, and the itself. And then there are fears related to the extreme measures the governments have taken and their economic consequences of these measures, disruptions in daily routines (e. ., banks’ reduced hours, business closures, other people’s panicky behaviors, etc.).

Depressed and anxious in America

But as difficult as it is for the average person to manage such fears, it is more so for those with mental illness.

Roughly one in five Americans experience a psychological disorder (a mental illness) every year. The most common disorders, anxiety disorders (e.g., , ), affect 48 million Americans. Other psychological disorders are also prevalent:

Three million with ( )

Seven million with

Nine million with ( )

Eighteen million with major depressive disorder (the leading cause of disability in the world)

Many individuals with mental illness were already struggling with regulating their emotions and managing their daily stressors, so they are finding life nearly unmanageable during the virus outbreak. For a large group of them, their financial resources are just as stretched as their emotional resources. As Funk and colleagues note, compared to others, “People with mental disorders are at much higher risk of descending into poverty.”

Voices of the mentally ill

I have heard from dozens of mentally ill individuals who are struggling during these times. Here are a few examples:

A young mother says her OCD was under control, but the outbreak and the nonstop news coverage have made her OCD return stronger than ever. She spends hours each day cleaning. She says she maintains social distancing even with her own little child at home, but can’t sleep at night, because she keeps “having about infecting” her child.

Another person with PTSD says he is frightened of individuals wearing masks. He has left several grocery stores after spotting a masked customer in the lineup behind him. “The person might as well be holding a gun and pointing it at me.”

An obese individual with writes he has stopped exercising because his panic symptoms have come back much stronger than before. He is so incapacitated by the symptoms that his ailing 80-year-old mother has been doing his shopping and getting his medications.

A college student with depression, who has dropped her courses and gone on sick leave recently, complains of the never-ending messages about the disease in the media: “This is fearmongering. But I feel hypnotized. I watched five hours of news yesterday. Felt so hopeless, I wished a giant earthquake would kill us all instead of this slow death.”

A young individual with social and bipolar disorder says, “Yesterday I was shopping and had a , so I started sweating. Then two store employees came up to me and said I should go to the hospital if I have a fever. It was humiliating. People were staring. They looked at me like I was a criminal.”

An older person with depression writes, “This situation is much worse than war. During the war, at least we could get together, touch each other, hold each other.”

A recent widow with depression says that once every couple of weeks, she used to go to her doctor and merely seeing him made her feel comforted. “But now,” she explains, “he won’t see me in person. Of course, that’s fine, because if I go to his office, I would worry about catching the disease from other patients. Still, that was my only source of social support. Now I have nobody.”

I have heard from individuals with mental illness who are more, drinking more, and engaging in other unhealthy behaviors. Socialization and healthy routines crucial to maintaining mental and physical health are no longer a possibility for them, either because of social changes or their own fears.

Source: Free-Photos/Pixabay

Concluding thoughts on the COVID-19 and mental health

In a hypothetical world, when we try to solve a problem, we can keep everything else constant. But not in the real world. So, we must make sure that when we try to protect some of us from a disease like coronavirus disease COVID-19, we do not inadvertently harm others or those very people.

Yes, some people who are more likely to be harmed by the disease (e.g., older people and those with underlying medical conditions) may also have a mental illness, be isolated, and have limited personal and social resources. Indeed, if older people are instructed to stay home “and avoid social contact with family and friends, urgent action is needed to mitigate the mental and physical health consequences.”

We need to remember loneliness, fear, stress, and their negative effects (e.g., sleep problems) increase susceptibility to viruses and viral diseases like COVID-19. Therefore, if we must take extreme measures to reduce the spread of a disease, we must, with equal seriousness and care, address the harms our measures might produce. Individually, as a country, and as one people, we need to do more to help the mentally ill during these difficult times. Let their voices be heard.