We were terribly divided to begin with. This was an opportunity (!) to get us all on side, much like the "alien invasion" some used to talk about to get the world on the same page. Instead any action taken was greeted with suspicion, from all sides.
Was is like this during WWII? Were FDR's fireside chats mocked and derided as fake news and misinformation? Instead of "take out your atlas and look at the south Pacific, let me explain our strategy" we get glory holes and "don't take horse paste". Was there anything comparable back then? Maybe saving your bacon grease to make nitroglycerin was their version of washing your groceries.
I'm at the point where I've turned off all mainstream, and get my information from you, and a select few I follow on twitter. For medical advice it's Drs. Hinshaw, Zubin Dumania, John Campbell. Maybe that's crazy, but I sleep better.
As one who fancies himself a bit of a writer with a few opinions now and again, occasionally expressed with wit but always with thought, I can't hold a candle to the quality of the writing and thought in your writing, Jen. Great job. Please keep writing and thank you for doing it.
Thank you. Well written. We are not okay in the true sense of the word. The level of anger that is simmering within many and manifesting into previously inconceivable acts (picketing the very people and institutions that are saving lives) speak for themselves.
Well said Jen. Working in mental health I have watched what you describe every single day. Companies are asking for more help with the mental health of their employees. And the number one EAP claim has switched from muscolu-skeletal to mental health. At one such company, they have shared that if people identified their top 2 concerns, 89% include mental health.
I am educated and practiced in this work. And I was diagnosed with depression in August 2020 and recently have had a sharp decline in my coping mechanisms causing me to feel overwhelmed with anxiety. And I too have "That friend" who has disappeared into the world of conspiracy theories, libertarianism and anger. I am trying to stay connected in hopes that some support at a distance helps her to hopefully more towards recovery.
Poor mental health doesn't just "Happen". It's a slow decline, it happens in layers, it happens when worlds collide and boundaries are breeched. And it happens when we don’t put our mental wellness on par with our physical wellness. After all, our brains are a physical organ.
Take care of your wellness this Thanksgiving weekend. And ask for help. We all need it.
Thankyou for showing me I'm not the only person thinking exactly these thoughts! 🤪
I find myself surrounded by otherwise reasonably intelligent people playing the "blaming/shaming game" and either raving down 12th Ave in Freedumb marches or barricading themselves in their homes.
Call me crazy, but either I'm actually you or you're raiding my mind ... 1🤔😏😊🤣
So well written... and I know my mental health has been what I would generously call... delicate. I mean, my patience (already thin) is now gone. I have such an utter loathing and contempt for anti-vaxxers that even as I feel it (and type this sentence), I know my contempt level is unreasonable and unreasoning. I can't even pretend to be nice to people like that anymore or even agree to disagree. I want them all to suffer and pay for their own healthcare AND I simply dump them from my life. As for the vaccine hesitant, I barely - and I do mean barely - can empathize. Parts of this article described exactly what I am like after two years of this and it also describes so well the hysteria that we are seeing on either side of the divide.
Good read. I must say I don’t understand the apparent helplessness of media managers when it comes to defending their staff. If all they are doing is tweeting about it, they should be fired.
This is bang on. I've found it curious over the last year that, on the one hand, public health officials admit about the risk to mental health of the pandemic, but do not seem to have connected the dots between that and the escalating levels of public looniness on display. And not just in Canada, either.
I echo the comments from many other commenters; very well written and it really captures my feelings. While I typically feel mentally resilient, I must admit that the pandemic has caused me to question my assessment. The fact that both of my siblings (and their families) - who I have typically seen eye to eye with on most big issues over the past 50+ years - are opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine - has proven to be very unsettling. After much angst, we've agreed to disagree on the subject. But that has not quelled my uneasiness. I feel that I'm been very rationale in how I've responded to the pandemic - listening to the guidance of public health experts and celebrating the fact that vaccinations have been developed to protect society from the worst of Covid-19. But I worry how much like how my family's divide has upset my apple cart, this divide in Canada and in many parts of the developed world, will impact our society long-term.
It's a rough ride, but we have to remember, we've weathered wars where tens of thousands of families got That Telegram that somebody aged 20-45 wasn't coming home. Nobody should be surprised by our emotional resilience.
I don't put the anti-vax demonstrators into the same kind of crazy diagnosis as people stressed by lockdown. I'd already watched Tea Party demonstrations about communist health care from the Kenyan witch doctor, and read Jon Kay's book 'Among the Truthers' about 9/11 crazies and other conspiracy theorists. The pandemic just drew an existing body of such people all together on the one topic.
(I do blame the pandemic for them all finding each other, and exchanging all their different theories, and wadding them all together into a ball called Qanon.)
I'll repeat a prediction: PPC vote will fall back again in the next election, absent a vaccine outrage to fuel it. I think most of the increase from 1.6% to 5% was just vaccine crazies. There will be downward-stickiness, but I'm predicting 3% for the next round.
That part of the "mental health crisis" is almost entirely driven by media, especially social media, selling crazy stories because people click on them. It long pre-dates COVID. The traditional media are not entirely lacking in guilt when it comes to scaring the populace with low-probability threats (if we leave Afghanistan, they'll follow us home and attack), and social media have all those same incentives, but lack the pros' two centuries of professional standards or attitudes.
Human childhood development takes many years for these habits to be acquired and normalized. We improvise with habits as we grow up, mature and age.
A global pandemic strikes me as the nearest peacetime equivalent to the massive scale of disruption of world war.
Things are not where they are supposed to be, in the shorter and, possibly, in the longer run. This is a source of stress and anxiety. For some, pre-pandemic normal was already a source of stress and anxiety, which the pandemic has only exacerbated.
Health is relative. If we find a bird that can't fly we wonder what is the cause. We don't search for ailments if we come across a beaver than can't fly.
In other words, the disruption of normal and the relative status of 'crazy' go hand-in-hand.
The reference points of normal and healthy are shifted, 'crazy' becomes a moving target. Beliefs are being tested. Trust is in shorter supply.
Vaccines are offered as the pathway back to normal by certain authorities.
In response anti-vaxers expose the ideological fault lines and the vulnerable social interdependencies within modern, globalized societies. Shouts of 'freedom!' translate as 'I want my normal back!'.
It is also a time for the hard-nosed clarification of our beliefs and values through the compassionate dialogue which favours a healthy democratic peacetime society as normal.
Those who are calling for war because vaccine mandates block access to their favourite watering holes, may be resetting the reference points for normal and crazy in contemporary society. But they are also inviting the public democratic dialogue which can establish the baseline, not necessarily universal, consensus to re-establish the reference points of normal, healthy habits.
You write so well.
We were terribly divided to begin with. This was an opportunity (!) to get us all on side, much like the "alien invasion" some used to talk about to get the world on the same page. Instead any action taken was greeted with suspicion, from all sides.
Was is like this during WWII? Were FDR's fireside chats mocked and derided as fake news and misinformation? Instead of "take out your atlas and look at the south Pacific, let me explain our strategy" we get glory holes and "don't take horse paste". Was there anything comparable back then? Maybe saving your bacon grease to make nitroglycerin was their version of washing your groceries.
I'm at the point where I've turned off all mainstream, and get my information from you, and a select few I follow on twitter. For medical advice it's Drs. Hinshaw, Zubin Dumania, John Campbell. Maybe that's crazy, but I sleep better.
As one who fancies himself a bit of a writer with a few opinions now and again, occasionally expressed with wit but always with thought, I can't hold a candle to the quality of the writing and thought in your writing, Jen. Great job. Please keep writing and thank you for doing it.
Thank you. Well written. We are not okay in the true sense of the word. The level of anger that is simmering within many and manifesting into previously inconceivable acts (picketing the very people and institutions that are saving lives) speak for themselves.
Well said Jen. Working in mental health I have watched what you describe every single day. Companies are asking for more help with the mental health of their employees. And the number one EAP claim has switched from muscolu-skeletal to mental health. At one such company, they have shared that if people identified their top 2 concerns, 89% include mental health.
I am educated and practiced in this work. And I was diagnosed with depression in August 2020 and recently have had a sharp decline in my coping mechanisms causing me to feel overwhelmed with anxiety. And I too have "That friend" who has disappeared into the world of conspiracy theories, libertarianism and anger. I am trying to stay connected in hopes that some support at a distance helps her to hopefully more towards recovery.
Poor mental health doesn't just "Happen". It's a slow decline, it happens in layers, it happens when worlds collide and boundaries are breeched. And it happens when we don’t put our mental wellness on par with our physical wellness. After all, our brains are a physical organ.
Take care of your wellness this Thanksgiving weekend. And ask for help. We all need it.
Thank you for this one, Jen. I think you nailed it.
Thankyou for showing me I'm not the only person thinking exactly these thoughts! 🤪
I find myself surrounded by otherwise reasonably intelligent people playing the "blaming/shaming game" and either raving down 12th Ave in Freedumb marches or barricading themselves in their homes.
Call me crazy, but either I'm actually you or you're raiding my mind ... 1🤔😏😊🤣
So well written... and I know my mental health has been what I would generously call... delicate. I mean, my patience (already thin) is now gone. I have such an utter loathing and contempt for anti-vaxxers that even as I feel it (and type this sentence), I know my contempt level is unreasonable and unreasoning. I can't even pretend to be nice to people like that anymore or even agree to disagree. I want them all to suffer and pay for their own healthcare AND I simply dump them from my life. As for the vaccine hesitant, I barely - and I do mean barely - can empathize. Parts of this article described exactly what I am like after two years of this and it also describes so well the hysteria that we are seeing on either side of the divide.
Good read. I must say I don’t understand the apparent helplessness of media managers when it comes to defending their staff. If all they are doing is tweeting about it, they should be fired.
This is bang on. I've found it curious over the last year that, on the one hand, public health officials admit about the risk to mental health of the pandemic, but do not seem to have connected the dots between that and the escalating levels of public looniness on display. And not just in Canada, either.
Great article!
Awesome read.
Good piece, Jen.
I echo the comments from many other commenters; very well written and it really captures my feelings. While I typically feel mentally resilient, I must admit that the pandemic has caused me to question my assessment. The fact that both of my siblings (and their families) - who I have typically seen eye to eye with on most big issues over the past 50+ years - are opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine - has proven to be very unsettling. After much angst, we've agreed to disagree on the subject. But that has not quelled my uneasiness. I feel that I'm been very rationale in how I've responded to the pandemic - listening to the guidance of public health experts and celebrating the fact that vaccinations have been developed to protect society from the worst of Covid-19. But I worry how much like how my family's divide has upset my apple cart, this divide in Canada and in many parts of the developed world, will impact our society long-term.
It's a rough ride, but we have to remember, we've weathered wars where tens of thousands of families got That Telegram that somebody aged 20-45 wasn't coming home. Nobody should be surprised by our emotional resilience.
I don't put the anti-vax demonstrators into the same kind of crazy diagnosis as people stressed by lockdown. I'd already watched Tea Party demonstrations about communist health care from the Kenyan witch doctor, and read Jon Kay's book 'Among the Truthers' about 9/11 crazies and other conspiracy theorists. The pandemic just drew an existing body of such people all together on the one topic.
(I do blame the pandemic for them all finding each other, and exchanging all their different theories, and wadding them all together into a ball called Qanon.)
I'll repeat a prediction: PPC vote will fall back again in the next election, absent a vaccine outrage to fuel it. I think most of the increase from 1.6% to 5% was just vaccine crazies. There will be downward-stickiness, but I'm predicting 3% for the next round.
That part of the "mental health crisis" is almost entirely driven by media, especially social media, selling crazy stories because people click on them. It long pre-dates COVID. The traditional media are not entirely lacking in guilt when it comes to scaring the populace with low-probability threats (if we leave Afghanistan, they'll follow us home and attack), and social media have all those same incentives, but lack the pros' two centuries of professional standards or attitudes.
We are creatures of habits.
Human childhood development takes many years for these habits to be acquired and normalized. We improvise with habits as we grow up, mature and age.
A global pandemic strikes me as the nearest peacetime equivalent to the massive scale of disruption of world war.
Things are not where they are supposed to be, in the shorter and, possibly, in the longer run. This is a source of stress and anxiety. For some, pre-pandemic normal was already a source of stress and anxiety, which the pandemic has only exacerbated.
Health is relative. If we find a bird that can't fly we wonder what is the cause. We don't search for ailments if we come across a beaver than can't fly.
In other words, the disruption of normal and the relative status of 'crazy' go hand-in-hand.
The reference points of normal and healthy are shifted, 'crazy' becomes a moving target. Beliefs are being tested. Trust is in shorter supply.
Vaccines are offered as the pathway back to normal by certain authorities.
In response anti-vaxers expose the ideological fault lines and the vulnerable social interdependencies within modern, globalized societies. Shouts of 'freedom!' translate as 'I want my normal back!'.
It is also a time for the hard-nosed clarification of our beliefs and values through the compassionate dialogue which favours a healthy democratic peacetime society as normal.
Those who are calling for war because vaccine mandates block access to their favourite watering holes, may be resetting the reference points for normal and crazy in contemporary society. But they are also inviting the public democratic dialogue which can establish the baseline, not necessarily universal, consensus to re-establish the reference points of normal, healthy habits.
Strange … as a subscriber, this did not show up in my in box, only came upon it on twitter.