Towards mental well-being during COVID-19

MINNA MATHEW

Observing the Mental Health Day on October 10 has greater relevance during these pandemic days than ever before. People across the globe are facing the impact of COVID-19 in many ways and have harnessed the mental health to a greater extent than before. The theme for this year ‘Mental health for all –Greater Investment, Greater Access’ conveys the urgent need and necessity of reahing out to everyone. The pandemic itself has added on to the challenges we were already facing. We all need to learn and follow new routines, not because it is a need, but a necessity for our own existence.

For everyone, mental health is just absence of mental health problems. Mental and emotional health has much more to convey. It is not being free from anxiety and depression. We all have bad times, when we go through loss, disappointments and adversities. It is the presence of strong coping skills that help us to bounce back from adversity, trauma and stress, which we rarely note or appreciate in ourselves. This ability is called resilience and it is the tool kit for coping and maintaining a positive outlook. This helps people to remain productive in good and bad times by being more flexible and focused.

Knowingly or unknowingly we all take effort to improve the situation. There are practices which you can adopt to improve resilience. It requires hard work as we have to invest for keeping ourselves physically fit. These practices help in building a sense of contentment, flexibility to learn new skills to adapt, to bounce back from adversities, self-confidence, self-esteem, the ability to maintain fulfilling relationships, to balance responsibilities, work, and leisure, and provide meaning  life and the zest for living.

Dr. Daniels, President of WFMH says, “Now, more than ever, greater investment in mental health is needed to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to mental health care.

When we practice being grateful, maintaining positive relationships, and having faith and hope, it helps to look forward for a flourishing future. Cognitive therapy, mindfulness meditation, expressive writing and other psychotherapies done with professional assistance will be beneficial for people to enhance their well-being through learning to be more realistic and break the feedback loop and distorted thinking and find an alternative and more accurate way of thinking.

But at certain times, we bottle up our problems, we ignore the emotional messages, we distract ourselves or else simply give up. The first and foremost help to give people is to educate them about these psychological impacts. It has to be made clear that it is normal for anyone to have this emotional turmoil when we undergo stress. Self-help interventions have also helped to cope with these bad times. Don’t forget to appreciate ourselves for making a change in the well-being of oneself as well as others.

We are all in constant learning and trying to enhance our mental health as we all fall in a continuum of well-being. We have to do constant self-assessment, evaluations and feedbacks from others about how we feel, how we are meeting everyday functions, responsibilities, do we feel stressed, do we need assistance and so on. There are many applications which claim to be helpful to keep the routine, to monitor oneself, self-managementand so on but not every app serves the need.

We have to look for the approved ones as well as from professionals in mental health and they will guide you regarding the apt one for you and to know whether this is going to do the help or do more harm. Though it is a smart way to help people stay connected outside the therapy sessions, it never can be used as an alternative for the professionals in mental health.

Now a day’s several clinics are providing such services as part of regular health care. The online services are providing a great support in therapy services by reaching out and reducing the barriers of travelling long distances and accessibility to trained clinicians. Studies based on tele-health are showing remarkable progress in many areas including mental health and behaviour management.

There are interactive sessions with all family members, to have a better monitoring of how the child is behaving at home and even interactive sessions using an educational software or app that supports teaching. With the number of studies on interventions based on e-therapy, there is now considerable support for the use of online therapy for delivering evidence-based therapeutic services. There are situations where we can’t recommend this but only close and direct monitoring helps.

There are times when people feel all the symptoms so intensely and frequently, constant and overwhelming, out of proportion affecting their daily functions and when these self-help strategies are not working, it is advisable to seek professional help. The self-check of the emotions you are undergoing can help to take a decision.

The pandemic we face now is going to be the world’s biggest psychological research along with the medical condition itself. We all are aware and “sometimes” accepting the stress related to the illness as well as the quarantine, social isolation and the new lifestyle. This stress will naturally lead to a secondary epidemic of burnouts, stress related absenteeism, dependency on substance abuse and suicides in the following months, experts say in the field of health, economy and population. There is going to be an unexpected increase in mental health concerns, UN says.

Psychologists and social workers have to work hand in hand with medical professionals to help people overcome the aftermath of the crisis response– those who have been wounded with the medical condition itself, the ones who are at risk, the quarantined, the isolated, the stress and burnouts of health care professionals and the whole bunch of people who worked for preventing the disease spread, the loss of loved ones, being away from family, job loss and lack of employment opportunities,business loss, the migrant workers, the ones who had less access to hospitals even during an emergency, the people who had to adopt new work styles. The invisible wounds of the community, going through the days of trauma goes neglected.

We have to set up those helping hands to overcome the trauma and to help each other overcome the global breakdown. Have a keen look at the emotional well-being of your loved ones too. Being genuinely grateful for health care professionals and the ones who work day and night for preventive measures and for each and every benefits we have will have beneficiary effects. Trying to focus only on things we can control and sharing our worries with our loved ones helps.

Let everyone of us look forward to a better flourishing life and not going back to normal life.

Ms. Minna Mathew is a clinical psychologist and behavior analyst . She works at Prayatna Center for Child Development, Kochi. She completed MA, MPhil in Clinical Psychology .