There’s the deep dread of being unable to provide as economic consequences continue to kick in, jobs vanish and businesses close. There’s the simmering anxiety that a second surge of COVID-19 is coming, or that every trip outdoors could be literally sickening or fatal. There’s the soul-deep guilt of having been unable to tend to aged loved ones or to properly mourn those lost to or during the pandemic.
Surveys conducted for Mental Health Week illustrated the toll. Forty-six per cent of Canadians – more than double the pre-pandemic soundings — told Nanos Research they are feeling stress regularly or constantly. Those who reported higher stress cited anxiety, uncertainty, preoccupation, sleep problems, feelings of isolation and disruption.
As the Star reported this week, a new Ipsos survey found that nearly 60 per cent of Ontario parents reported seeing changes in their children’s behaviour since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, including emotional outbursts, extreme irritability, drastic mood changes, difficulty sleeping and persistent sadness. Read the rest of this editorial at The Toronto Star…
Crises have a way not just of delivering their own consequences, but of burning away facades, pretenses, excuses – of exposing painful reality or fundamental flaws. If we did not address these mental-health crises as they were rising slowly, and we did not, we must resolve to do better when they seem to have arrived hard and fast.
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