Covid-19, Unemployment, Depression
Here’s the latest from Practicing Mental Illness:
This week the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article about people left unemployed by restrictions put in place by the government in response to the coronavirus. The article described how many of these people are becoming depressed.
Featured by the Inquirer were the owners of the Kawaii Kitty Café, a business in my neighborhood of Queen Village where people paid to sit in a room full of kittens and drink hot chocolate and milkshakes. It may sound silly, but it was a great place to take kids, teens flocked there and the storefront delighted passers-by. Now, because of the city’s restrictions on business and the entry into another shutdown, the Kitty Café is gone.
On Facebook, neighbors who fully support the shutdown commented on the loss of the Café and decorated each post with thumbs-up, hearts and little sad faces. I got angry. I wanted to add to the comments, “So reopen the goddamned economy already!”
I decided to breathe and consider the main point of the Inquirer’s article. Because of the Covid-19 shutdown people are losing their jobs for good – and many of them are becoming depressed.
We’re shutting down again, and this time there is no fixed end date and no criteria established that will allow businesses to reopen. This is just going to go on and on, and more and more people are going to lose their jobs.
And more and more people are going to face mental health challenges few are prepared to deal with.
We are very capable of successfully treating almost every person who contracts Covid-19. We are very capable of wearing masks and keeping social distance in stores, gyms and restaurants, thus limiting the spread of the virus. We are not nearly as capable of reversing the negative effects of depression once it sinks its clutches into a person struggling with unemployment.
Many people who become unemployed become depressed. Cruelly, because of the co-occurrence of unemployment and depression, they’re likely to stay both unemployed and depressed.
Even before the coronavirus, depression was the number two cause of long-term disability in the United States. The effects of depression on those who continue, or try to continue, to work are just as grave.
A study from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the University of Pittsburg followed over 5,000 people who reported symptoms of depression for five years. Mind you, these research subjects reported symptoms of depression, not a diagnosis of full-blown major depressive disorder.
Still, 33% of those whose depression symptoms occurred while unemployed reported new unemployment throughout the survey period. 17% with depression following unemployment found, when they did find new work, their income had fallen to less than $25,000 per year.
The problem compounds when a person who becomes depressed during unemployment falls into debt. People in depression who hold problem debt are 4.2 times more likely to still be in depression 18 months after the debt was incurred, and those facing problem debt are three times more likely to commit suicide than people with manageable debt no debt at all.
Then there’s the blunt fact of how intractable depression symptoms are and how, for some, treatment doesn’t help. While between 97% and 99.5% of people who contract Covid-19 recover, 15% of those who experience depression are treatment resistant and do not get better.
Depression is isolating and so many who experience it suffer alone. Deaths of despair as a result of unemployment and depression are surely on the rise, but even those who compile public health data are not paying attention. While data on the coronavirus pandemic are reported in real-time, stats on suicide and overdoses lag by two years. The most recent public health data we have on deaths of despair are from 2018.
We won’t know the full impact of today’s unemployment and depression until it’s far too late.
Many of my Facebook friends here in Queen Village are professionals and educators and businesspeople who have not suffered economically during the pandemic like restaurant workers and retail clerks have at all. In fact, their investment portfolios are soaring and their children, at home in pods with private tutors, are thriving. They know very little about the economic and mental health impact of the shutdown.
In the meantime, last night the pub on the corner posted on Facebook that come Sunday they will close indefinitely. More unemployment and more people at risk of depression. And of course, more thumbs up, hearts and little sad faces on the comments bar.
We have lost our empathy and support for those at risk of the next pandemic – the ravages of poor mental health sure to follow Covid-19. We should be shouting, “So reopen the goddamned economy already!” Those ardent supporters of Mayor Kenney and Governor Wolf, as are many here in Queen Village, should be using whatever influence they have to set aside restrictions on businesses.
Instead they’ll cover Facebook posts about the closure of some of their favorite places with thumbs up, little hearts and sad faces as unemployment and depression surge.
If you or anyone you know are thinking of suicide please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
Meditation
Classic, seated, focus on the breath or a mantra meditation does not work for everybody. Some, especially those prone to depression or anxiety, find they get hooked by dangerous rumination that only aggravates their distress. But there are other ways to develop mindfulness and the awareness, focus and ability to work that come with it. One such way is to journal; to bring the full attention onto the creative introspection of collecting and expressing thoughts. Take a look at some instructions on meditation-free mindfulness. NOTE: The post I link to includes a link to an app called Cactus which no longer exists. But the ability to find prompts to help you journal still does. The post includes some ideas.