Excerpted from: The Reckless Wait To Reopen Is Destroying The Nation’s Psyche | By Tristan Justice | The Federalist
A new study released earlier this month offers fresh evidence that some mental health professionals’ worst fears in the era of the coronavirus pandemic are coming true.
PsyDPrograms.org, a community of clinical psychologists who help students pursue advanced degrees in psychology, found positive screenings for severe anxiety skyrocket as the nation faces unprecedented job losses and acute uncertainty amid the shutdown draining hope from communities.
Analyzing 2020 data from Mental Health America, a non-profit that tracks mental health indicators using online surveys and screening tools, PsyDPrograms found rates of severe anxiety climbed 34 percent nationwide within the last three months, coinciding with a rise in Google searches for online therapy as social distancing measures keep patients from accessing face-to-face treatment.
(EDITOR EPISCOPIS CONTEMPLATIONES: What the author is saying in the previous paragraph is; with most clinics shut down as “non essential” coupled with the fear a sufferer might have of possibly contracting the virus thereby precluding a visit to a doctor/therapist or priest; we have no way of knowing the full extent of psychological issues Americans are having at this time. The 34% figure is probably a small percentage of the actual number of cases, the proverbial tip of the ice berg!)
While there’s no public data available to determine state-by-state suicides for the past two months of the pandemic, there’s good reason to believe deaths by suicide are on the rise. Crisis hotlines have been reporting record calls across the country. The Disaster Distress Helpline run by the federal government saw an 891 percent increase in calls for March compared to the same month last year.
Knox County, Tennessee saw more lives lost to suicide than from the virus itself as the pandemic started ramping up. Benton County in central Washington suffered eight suicides between March 12 and April 23. Montgomery County near Houston has seen at least 11 suicides since March 23. Two frontline medical workers in New York committed suicide just in the past week, raising further awareness that those in the arena against the virus are particularly prone to high stress. Sixteen people have killed themselves in Queens since March 15.
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Meanwhile, substance abuse is on the rise as millions of Americans escape to their favorite vices to cope with the joblessness, extreme isolation, and constant doomsday predictions creating a new wave in mental health crises.
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There’s no telling what being locked in the house for six weeks have done to you,” East Tennessee therapist Allysen Efferson told The Federalist, adding that the sudden change in environment is a colossal obstacle for anyone with a mental illness, including addiction, to overcome.
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Each one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, according to The New York Times, also correlates to a 3.5 percent increase in opioid addiction, a crisis that had faded into the background of our national dialogue but had never actually gone away.
Episcopis Contemplationes 