The real long covid…?

Late 2019 the world stopped. We were facing a pandemic, something no one ever thought we would experience, and yet here we all are trying to regain some normality and move forwards with life. 

But is the pandemic to blame for the rising mental health crisis? Statistics show the increase in referrals for support and rising by the day. The younger generation especially.

My own private practice went to five clients a week on top of full-time working and other contracts with organisations, bringing my hours of work a week up to 65-70 hours. How can that even be possible?

So where’s it coming from, this crisis? 

We are living in an age that is teaching everyone to talk about how they feel, that it’s important to do so, to talk about mental health, well-being, traumatic incidents, past trauma, abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, make everyone aware, don’t be silent, speak out, have a voice, be heard, be kind, it’s ok to not be ok….. social media promotes this, it’s a great tool but…..

Who is here to facilitate this? Where are the funds to facilitate this? Government say there will be a therapist in all schools and funding for everyone to access therapy. We haven’t seen this come in to play yet, but like the CRISIS funding and the lack of support for secondary mental health services, there is very little for the clients that can access this and the support can be inconsistent with tick box procedures. Where are the tools to equip our people?

I use the term ‘our people’ because this could be us, each and every one of us. No one can escape trauma, emotional responses and the everyday world we live in without learning resilience and having the tools to cope and move forwards. 

The young people, the next generation, our future people are faced with this new way of being, facilitated by a bunch of people living from a generation who was never taught to speak out, possibly dismissed, told to get on with it, no time to dwell, don’t be sensitive, stop playing the victim, what’s wrong with you, get a grip and of course for the men, man up!

And then we look at the generation that told us this… they would be coming from the generation of, if you are dying you're placed in the back room and no one is allowed to even mention you're unwell, act like nothing is wrong, say nothing at all, stiff upper lip, don’t let anyone know.

So is the real long covid crisis the mental health crisis we now try to contain, with limited funding and limited access to therapies with months long waiting lists for referrals of clients to be seen?

The young generation, our future, are not being contained in this crisis, so where is the support best needed?

If we supported the middle generation we could teach these clients to contain their young people’s emotions, facilitate their process… 

generational crisis

verses

mental health crisis.