Is COVID-19 causing a mental health crisis?

According to a recent paper published by the US government’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCV), the coronavirus has triggered a ‘heightened public mental health crisis’, with ‘generalised fear and fear-inducing overreactive behaviour’ becoming common in the public. Certainly, data seems to lead us to that conclusion.

Since the report was published, however, disparate groups of mental health professionals have denigrated it as alarmism, warning that labelling COVID-19 a ‘mental health crisis’ could in fact do more harm than good.

Jonathan Gadsby, research fellow for mental health and learning disability nurse at Birmingham City University, joined mental health experts from the universities of East London, Liverpool, and Roehampton in issuing a joint statement warning that, ‘The experience of anxiety, depression and other expressions of a very troubled mind cannot easily be said to be ‘mental illness’ during this coronavirus pandemic nor in the context of other emergencies we currently face.’

The report claims that, in fact, the heightened sense of dismay currently being felt in our collective consciousness might instead be a sign of ‘enhanced connection and concern for other humans, other species, and the planet’, as well as an acknowledgement of the fragility of our ecosystems. ‘All if those’ Gadsby and his colleagues continue, ‘…are features of mental wellness, not mental illness, crucial for understanding oneself and the world, and for energising the solutions we need.’

The dangers of labelling something an epidemic without due recourse are manifold. Misleading headlines and reports claiming that the health crisis now extends to our minds send a very troubling message.

Firstly, it inclines us to offer the wrong solutions. At the moment, meeting people’s basic needs by disseminating food, clothing, PPE, and other essential resources should be top of the list when it comes to coronavirus coping mechanisms. Declaring a mental health epidemic, however, could shoot psychiatric drugs to near the top of that list, leading people to quick and permanent solutions to potentially temporary problems.

Moreover, by blaming the current mental upset solely on the conditions of COVID-19, we miss an opportunity to channel these feelings into finding solutions for the very real social problems highlighted by the pandemic. As I wrote about last week, social distancing and the current economic recession have shone new light on inequality both within western society, and between the west and the east.

People who live in poor communities or countries, have little or no job security, and who live in cramped conditions (like refugees and asylum seekers) have been far more negatively affected by the virus than the wealthy. They’re more likely to have lost loved ones or their jobs, and to be in dangerous situations during lockdown. Consequently, they’re more likely to become victims of this mental health ‘epidemic’.

We shouldn’t manufacture a parity between those who are feeling lonely and alienated during the lockdown but who are otherwise safe, and those for whom any instability is life threatening. For the latter group, COVID-19 is merely exacerbating problems that already existed, and we should be using this quiet period to think more carefully about long-term solutions to the basic inequalities that fissure our society, and that cannot be cured with anti-depressants.

It’s true that when we eventually emerge from our domiciles into a bright new day some damage control will be needed for those who’ve found the lockdown period particularly stressful or upsetting. Some people will have developed new anxiety disorders around the threat that deadly viruses pose, whilst others will have slipped back into addiction, and others still will have found their relationships irreparably strained. This is cause for concern, and heralds difficulties ahead, but it doesn’t constitute a mental health epidemic. Our current anxiety levels are merely a symptom of COVID-19, not a new pandemic in and of itself.