The governors are deciding where you can go and what you can do. They’re deciding if you can go to work, keep your business open or visit your family and friends. They’re closing parks and stores and handing out curfews. 

With 95% of us on lockdown orders, many are coping with new or continuing mental issues to deal with because of the circumstances of the pandemic. 

The lockdowns and loss of freedoms are leading to big and little mental disorders that people are dealing with including depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, stress, eating disorders, insomnia, panic attacks and more. 

According to the National Institute of Health, nearly one in five adults in the United States lives with a mental illness and that was before the pandemic hit. 

David M. Benedek, MD, professor of psychiatry and chairman of the Uniformed Services University’s Department of Psychiatry, is very concerned about the stress of social isolation that is happening. He said, “Those who depend on intensive outpatient programs or frequent hospitalizations are at particular risk because those programs are necessarily suspended in many places.” 

Mental health issues can also lead to actual health problems. Research from the Health Resources & Services Administration shows loneliness and social isolation can be as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, boosting the risk of coronary heart disease by 29% and a stroke by 32%. 

Do you support individual military members being able to opt out of getting the COVID vaccine?

By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from SteveGruber.com, occasional offers from our partners and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement.

A study in JAMA Psychiatry reports that one in eight Americans could be considered an alcoholic. Isolation won’t help with that situation and most governors are allowing the sale of alcohol (and marijuana) even though they’ve prohibited the sales of other things. 

The recovering alcoholic is having a difficult time as well. According to the Alcoholics Anonymous General Service Office, there were 2,130,419 members in AA in 2018. 

Since social distancing orders have closed down most AA meetings, recovering alcoholics have been participating in virtual meetings online and are meeting secretly in small groups in order to stay sober and help each other get through the current pandemic crisis without starting to drink again. 

AA meetings are definitely essential. Far more essential than other things that the tyrannical governors are letting stay open like pot stores. 

A recent study in Lancet Psychiatry reports that the COVID-19 pandemic is going to have a “profound and pervasive impact” on global mental health and the authors call for a monitoring of depression, anxiety, suicides and other issues in addition to creating remote treatment programs. 

Hopefully people are finding ways to de-stress and ways to ease their depression and lonliness. And if you’re doing pretty good, but just bored, here are some ideas of things to do.