What is Mental Health?
According to the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm), mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well being. It is something that affects the way we think, feel and act and also determines how we handle stress and other hardships.
How COVID has impacted mental health?
COVID-19 can be stressful for people. The rising of fear and anxiety about the disease can be overwhelming and create negative emotions for adults and children. According to the CDC, it states that public health actions such as social distancing can make people feel isolated and lonely resulting in an increase in stress and anxiety. Many of us worry and have fear about our health, the health of our loved ones, your financial situation, and the loss of support services that you rely on. Even though these actions are necessary for the overall protection of the public, it can be detrimental to our mental health. Therefore, it is important to stay mentally healthy especially during these stressful times.
A Study to Demonstrate COVID-19 Effect On Mental Health
A study was done by Joel Philip and Vinu Cherian from the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine demonstrated how Health Care workers are impacted during the pandemic and what factors affect their mental health. Through their rigorous evaluation, the authors were able to develop themes that were factors affecting the mental health of health care workers. Some factors included were age, gender, marital status, education level, occupational role, past medical history, and afflictions of family and friends. Some of their findings stated that age was related to psychological distress because, in the articles they found, it stated that middle-aged staff during COVID-19 are at higher risk of developing a mental health issue. Another finding mentioned in the article was those who were married developed a higher level of anxiety. Lastly, another finding that I thought was interesting was that depending on their role can cause a certain amount of distress such as those in the frontlines are more prone to develop psychological problems (Philip & Cherian, 2020).
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Overall, the authors found that nearly 30% of individuals who were quarantined developed psychological distress, and the longer they were in quarantine the greater the distress became. Another discovery from the factors was that social isolation affected mental health, it revealed that many employees were advised to not interact with work colleagues outside of work and that their meal breaks were to be taken alone. It led to the staff feeling lonely and experiencing psychological problems. The authors indicated that their study was to highlight the factors that affected mental health because having a better understanding could help ensure a healthy work environment. For more info on this study, visit https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0253717620934095 or our reference page
Importance of Mental Health
Mental health is important for your overall health. It is a vital part of your life that impacts your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Being emotionally healthy will help promote productivity in activities and are able to effectively cope with setbacks in life. It is also closely related to physical health, CDC mentions that mental illnesses like depression can increase the risk for physical health issues such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.