3 Ways Covid-19 Will Change Our Mental Health Positively

The pandemic will leave us mentally stronger, more grateful, and more accepting of mental health issues.

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Covid-19 will change the world in both good and bad ways. Here are three positive ways in which the pandemic will change our psychological well-being.

Destigmatizing Mental Illness

A significant amount of people will have experienced depression or severe anxiety during the pandemic, many for the first time. As bad news as this is for the people suffering from one or the other, it means good news for current and future sufferers from mental illnesses as a group.

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There will be a much greater awareness and acceptance of mental health problems. A greater awareness, because many more people will have experienced mental issues themselves. And a much greater acceptance because the people who experienced bad mental health during the pandemic will have realized that it can happen to anyone given the “right” circumstances.

This will translate into less stigmatization of mental illnesses. But it will also help long-time sufferers of mental illnesses to love themselves more. We will start realizing this:

If many people can develop mental health problems given the right breeding ground, then maybe I’m not flawed. Maybe I’m just a normal human being reacting to unfortunate or challenging circumstances.

People who suffer from mental illnesses, whether their journey started before, during, or after the pandemic, will feel less lonely knowing there are many more people out there who know what it’s like to experience a panic attack or to be depressed. If we think that others can relate to our experiences, we are more likely to share our thoughts and feelings. Doing so creates connection, and feeling connected to the world around us is important to our mental health.

Building Mental Strength

The mental well-being of the vast majority of people will suffer in some form or other from the pandemic and its consequences for the economy, education, and social life.

Not everyone will develop a mental illness. Yet, almost everyone will feel previously unknown (or rarely known) bouts of anxiety, sadness, worry, desperation, grief, panic, or rumination. But many people will bounce back from it.

And bouncing back from a catastrophe, overcoming adversity, makes us more resilient.

Resilient people exhibit psychological flexibility. This flexibility enables them to adapt to new situations, address challenges head-on, and apply coping strategies that work in the particular set of circumstances they find themselves in.

Sharing wisdom from a distance. Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

And suggestions on how to cope with the current situation are plentiful. We can find them on social media, in newspapers, our co-workers and neighbors happily share theirs, we discuss them with friends, or try them out with family members. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have published a list of things to do during these stressful times. And there is an abundance of tips on how to keep physically and mentally healthy during the pandemic in local community groups on Facebook.

Learning about various coping strategies, trying them out, and seeing what works for ourselves helps us to build a toolkit; a toolkit we have ready the next time we face a challenge in our lives.

Feeling Grateful

Gratitude is important to mental well-being. Gratitude helps us feel connected to others and the world around us, and it solidifies important relationships. And we learn that there is a lot to be grateful nowadays.

Needless to say, the heroes of the hour are the medical staff working relentlessly for the infected people, risking their own health. Coming behind them (with some distance) are the many volunteers who cook for vulnerable people, shop for the elderly, or connect with lonely strangers.

But there are also less obvious things and people to be thankful for. Toiletpaper. Disinfectant wipes. Soap. And dried pasta. Are there any everyday items we have taken for granted more than these unassuming essentials?

But where do our food and toiletries come from?

Farmers have grown the crops that enable factory workers to make pasta which is then transported to supermarkets where employers fill the shelves with the packed goods. (As an animal lover, I am not grateful to the “lifestock” farmers and butchers — quite the opposite. But there is no need for or point to faking gratitude. There is enough I do have to be grateful for.)

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We are also grateful for people who stock up supermarket shelves, deliver our mail or food, provide our household with water, or pick up our trash. They are putting themselves at a higher risk so we can live our lives as normal as possible. You may think not being able to go to the pub or gym is a major disruption of your life, but only imagine the chaos if workers stopped collecting the garbage!

Waving at my food delivery guy this morning — 2 meters physical distance between us — my “thank you” truly came from the heart. Yes, I pay him, yes, he is one of the lucky ones who still have a job, yes, if he didn’t do it, another desperate person would do the job. But this is more important:

I don’t have to leave the house because of him or people like him. My own health is being more protected because he puts his health in more danger. That is something to appreciate.

In these trying times, many of us practice gratefulness more often than we ever did before. Feeling grateful will become a habitual feeling, one that will be available to us for many more years to come, long after the pandemic has passed. We will continue to reap the benefits from gratitude, a deeper connection with the people around us and with the world we live in.

Here’s another positive side effect some of us might see from practicing gratitude. In order to feel grateful, we need to be mindful first. And mindfulness sometimes sparks interest. And an interest can sometimes lead us to change our ways for the greater good.

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Think about the much sought after toilet paper. I don’t know what exactly went into making it. Do you? This video will explain it to you. Apparently it is made from trees (unless you wipe with recycled toilet paper which in my experience only Germany really knows how to sell). Not so great.

Maybe we should push for the wider availability of recycled toilet paper. Maybe we should use water devices, Japanese-style toilets or bum guns, instead of toilet paper. Here’s a demonstration of the bum gun. These are widely using in Asian countries. And if Western countries only also had them there would not be any toilet paper turmoil. The quest to be grateful for what we have might actually lead to questioning what we have and replace it with something better.