The Future after COVID-19

Some of the things that became part of our daily lives in 2020 are working from home, losing close interaction with co-workers, friends and family, restriction from freely enjoying external activities and internet bandwidth. Whatever your personal concerns might be, there is one thing that is common to all of us: the need to face a different reality than what we’ve been accustomed to. COVID-19 has brought new paradigms, fears, questions, behaviors to society that we have never seen or thought about before this crisis. It is a ghost that follows us everywhere we go, while we try to adapt our reality from what we knew as normal to this new concept of normal (not always a pleasant one).

The reality is that most of us weren’t prepared to take a break from that old reality so abruptly. The fear of a second wave increases as the summer leaves the scene – it looks like we got a bit lucky in Canada for not having increased cases during the summer, which gave us the peace of mind to imagine that life could come back to normal. Oh, yes, we’ve indeed learned how to use masks and properly wash our hands. We normalized social distancing and small gatherings. Stores had time to recover their stock and many people are already back to work. We learned the value of toilet paper. Children are back to school and parents took a break – they are now able to breathe during working hours.

When talking about work, 2020 was thus pushed to open our minds and welcome a new mentality, where many people were obligated to work from home. This helped contain the effects of the pandemic but created other counter-effects that aren’t still totally acknowledged and understood by the average of the population: their office became home and their home became their office. Is it really a benefit? Even during summer, some people started to have difficulties to turn off from their office (which is just in the next room). During summer, all these challenges are reduced because Canadians are just in love with being outside at least until 9pm, when the sun comes down. During work days, all we do is to count the hours to outside and finally enjoy that beauty. We have been lucky for having a break from all this mess during summer so we could finally get the best of the most expected period of the year, but with Fall blossoming and the sun setting, we must ask ourselves how is this scenario changing. Were we able to recover psychologically from the confinement to be able to transition soon into winter with confidence? How will the winter add to this situation?

Not only we are moving towards what is normally the challenging seasons of the year, but we also have to account for the challenges that are still present from the first wave and the ones coming from the possibility of what a second wave of COVID-19 could bring. With the number of cases increasing and the government planning new measures to guarantee that the pandemic doesn’t grow out of proportion again, we dare to ask ourselves: how is this going to feel when winter arrives?

During winter, the body wants to retreat and rest more, due to the lack of constant contact with nature and exposure to the sun Physiological factors affect the body in a way that reduces our daily level of energy.

Other factors that might contribute to our reduced level of energy can be unhealthy eating patterns, lack of physical activity and excessive use of alcohol/drugs. All these factors added to the restlessness accumulated from fully enjoying the summer – where we stay very active, from 5am all through the night – which comes after 9pm, can really cause the body to feel sluggish and our levels of productivity can drop considerably. However, we still want to keep the same rhythm that we have during long sunny days. More people feel compelled to push themselves to continue producing the same in times where the body is constantly asking for rest, which causes a decrease on the their overall health and well-being and an increase of the risks of stress or stress related diseases like anxiety and depression.

According to INSP, 15-20% percent of Canadians suffer with mental disorders related to stress. Those were the normal rates before 2020. After all the experiences we went through this year as a collective, many are still recovering from the trauma of being confined, kept away from the warmness of most of their relationships, still recovering from the virus or having a loved one recovering.

According with The research, published online last week in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, more than 50% of the patients infected by COVID-19 had at least one mental disorder after a month of their recovery. Many studies inform that the inflammation caused by the virus increases the risk of psychological disorders. The number of mental illnesses since the pandemic has increased 29% while suicidal rates almost triples.

To address the elephant in the room, what could you do now, while we are still enjoying the beauty of Fall colors, to reduce the effects of what happened in your life since the beginning of 2020? Which measures could the government, your employer and the schools could adopt NOW to guarantee that everyone will stay safe mentally, independently of any virus?

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#coronavirus #covid19 #wellness #mentalillness #winter