If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it would be that people are really good at panic. Get enough of us worried about the same thing, we lose our peripheral vision. And we are conformists. As fear spreads, we charge mindlessly in a single direction, trampling considerations, like spooked cattle.
This is how the response to the coronavirus pandemic played out. Faced with an unfamiliar virus that might, rumours suggested, have originated as a bioweapon, we panicked. As images of death arrived from Italy and residents of Wuhan were boarded into their houses, governments threw everything at suppressing a poorly understood threat. They underestimated and in many cases ignored the consequences of the actions they were taking to protect citizens from the virus.
Professor of Youth Mental Health and former Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry has coined the phrase “shadow pandemic” to describe the plague of mental ill health which accompanied lockdowns in Australia. In November last year, McGorry published an article in thewarning that “the initial mental health impact has been severe, and worse may be coming”.
McGorry was not the only one to warn that Wuhan-style suppression was a cure as devastating as the disease. At the beginning of April last year an economist friend of mine contacted me in distress: she had quantified the potential harms of lockdown but the outfit she worked for was not prepared to publish her paper.
No one is panicking about mental health harms; what a strange take. But we have largely ignored the impact of lockdowns on mental health. Trying to put on a positive spin (“resilience”) is silly. Let’s recognise the harm and help people recover, which may take a long time.
People just need to stop whinging.
continues its journey into Murdoch territory - parnell palme mcguinness FFS
You need hope in sight, there is none.
The entire adult world has been scared witless.
The focus on resilience is important when ramping up support for our young people and will be critical when working alongside professionals in this space.
The Year of Watching and Waiting
But panic at no masks outside!
I'm done with resilience, we aren't living we are just existing
Mental health opinions from a ‘communications advisor’… ok. 😂
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