CNN Health: “5 Signs Your Coronavirus Anxiety Has Turned Serious, Threatening Your Mental Health, and What to Do About It”
Here is an excellent CNN Health article which I’m reprinting, because it deals very thoroughly with the potential impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on our mental health. The writer discusses several tools we can all use to offset some of the negative effects of living in lockdown, “hiding from death,” as I think of it.
CNN Health: by Sandee LaMotte
Enforced lockdowns. Isolation from friends and loved ones. Loss of job, income, economic stability.
Grief and loss on so many levels — from missing milestones such as birthdays and graduations to severe illness and death.
Difficult times made worse by the fear of an invisible, deadly enemy who strikes via the very air we breathe.
Coronavirus symptoms: 10 key indicators and what to do
Such is the anxiety-ridden reality of living in the age of coronavirus for many people around the world. While some of us may be coping well right now, experts worry our emotional resilience will begin to fray as the threat of Covid-19 drags on.
“We’re living constantly with a level of fear, a heightened state of arousal, much like Vietnam vets and Iraqi vets live with every day,” said trauma counselor Jane Webber, a professor of counselor education at Kean University in New Jersey.
“And our sympathetic nervous system can only stay in that overwhelmed, almost frenetic state for so long before we crash,” said Webber, who counseled survivors and families during 9/11’s tragic aftermath.
“I call it ‘chronic threat response’ — the continued state of being in a hyper-aroused survival mode,” said trauma psychologist Shauna Springer, who has spent a decade working with military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD.