By Nan Dickie,
Contributor
Over the past 10 days we’ve been riding a roller coaster.
Many local businesses and services have opened very carefully. This gave us reason to cheer — for those that were forced to shut abruptly over two months ago, and that can now, once again, offer goods and services to our community. We can cheer for ourselves, too, as we are now able to get our hair cut, have that massage we’ve been waiting for patiently and painfully, and get our pet’s winter coat shaved off.
And right at this joyous time, when we thought we could see the light at the end of this very dark tunnel, Dr. Bonnie Henry told us that there will no doubt be a second wave of this pandemic come autumn.
It feels like we were allowed to take one step forward, and then we abruptly hit a wall.
That explains it pretty well.
When the pandemic hit us in mid-March, the hope was that we would be done with it in a few months, and would be able to live normal lives again.
Not so.
Unfortunately, mental-health issues have been surfacing as the pandemic continues. They are a consequence of the immense, wide-ranging costs of the pandemic — economic, social and emotional, to name a few. No one has remained untouched by one or more of these factors.
At the least, we are experiencing isolation fatigue. And it is no wonder.
We are going through the experience of grief, as I wrote here five weeks ago. We’ve been through the initial shock of the pandemic’s reality. It would be impossible to deny it is happening (the second stage of grieving).
Read more: Column: What we are now experiencing is grief
Read more: Column: Running a long marathon no one asked to take part in
Some of us may have become angry about it – understandably so. But the pandemic is about each of “us,” not “us and them.” We are all in this together. We must cope by adapting to public health necessities. We base our new futures on wise protocols, and new ways of doing things. There’s no room for bargaining if we want to recover from this pandemic sooner rather than later.
And now, many people — up to half of us — are in grips of the next stage of grieving, that of depression, and its close companion, anxiety. The ongoing worry over the past two months has generated excess stress in many people — and stress can too readily morph into anxiety and/or depression.
If you are experiencing anxiety or depression at this time, do not ignore it. Share it. Talk about it with your doctor, go to a walk in clinic, phone Interior Mental Health at 250-833-4102, or the crisis line at 1-888-353-2273. Help is there for you.
Nan Dickie is a local author, speaker and former facilitator of a depression support group in Salmon Arm.