Irish Examiner view: Don’t ignore mental health pandemic

We cannot lose sight of the sharp increase in the numbers of people experiencing anxiety, depression, and stress.

The language of a crisis is never reassuring. While the arrival of the first Covid-19 vaccines has given new hope, those life-saving vials have been administered against a background of disturbing reports that the virus is “absolutely rampant” and “out of control” and that hospitals will soon be “overrun”.

These are justified, if alarming, descriptions at a time when medical experts predict that daily coronavirus cases will double to 6,000 within days. It is an appropriate response, then, to be on high alert and to continue to abide by the level 5 restrictions now in place as part of the country’s third national lockdown.

It is also appropriate, however, to take stock of the mental impact of the relentless talk of crisis and calamity. For almost a year, the destruction wrought by Covid-19 has never been out of the headlines. It has taken a heavy toll on lives, livelihoods, and health, both physical and mental. Lockdown might safeguard the former but, as we have seen, it can be very destructive of the latter, leading to isolation and loneliness.

While the focus is rightly on the surge in Covid-19 cases, we cannot lose sight of the sharp increase in the numbers of people experiencing anxiety, depression, and stress; a trend that is global in its reach.

Even in China, where communist leader Mao Zedong once declared mental illness a bourgeois delusion, the authorities have been forced to speak more openly about mental health as a third of its population reported mental health issues. One Beijing expert has predicted that the psychological effects of this crisis could last for more than a decade.

That sentiment is echoed closer to home. In the UK, Adrian James, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has warned that the pandemic posed the greatest threat to mental health since the Second World War. He predicts that the social consequences and economic fallout will be felt long after the virus has been brought under control.

We must begin to quantify the mental-health burden associated with the pandemic here too. Medical experts have warned that the psychosocial footprint of a major emergency is often larger than the medical footprint. As we struggle to meet people’s medical needs, we must also plan to deal with the effect on our mental wellbeing.

Perhaps, at last, we might also cast off the lingering stigma surrounding mental health. Sadly, that is still an issue, and a recent St Patrick’s Mental Health Services survey showed that more than 60% of people believe that being treated for a mental health difficulty is seen by Irish society as a sign of personal failure.

Now, more than ever, we need to challenge those ill-informed beliefs. It is the ideal time, then, to get behind the First Fortnight mental health arts festival, which began online on Saturday and continues until January 17. Since 2009, the charity has been working to challenge mental health prejudice and stigma through arts and culture. As festival programme co-ordinator Edel Doran aptly put it, there has never been a better time “to celebrate the importance of mental health and the power of the arts and community”.