The pandemic began with a sense of stunned compliance in people, but together it can end with hope.
That’s the word of those at the forefront of the mental health battle locally which has raged since the pandemic began.
"When something bad happens, you’ve got what it takes to make it okay,” said Dr. Jean Clinton, a child psychologist and professor at McMaster University.
She said that resilience is built, and in times of adversity, it is something that needs to be worked on consistently and worked on together.
Clinton reminds us that resilience isn’t controlled by genes, rather it is developed in response to the environment around us.
To understand our goal as a community from a mental health perspective, Helen Fishburn, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington, explains four phases of mental health she has seen in the region for us to better understand where we stand and how we can heal together.
Between March and June, the community went through the first phase, which Fishburn calls 'stunned compliance.' This was a period where the community was hit with a sudden change and did whatever they could to adapt to the world around them.
Between June and September, they went through a stage called 'coping and resilient,' where the lockdown was lifted and some form of normalcy was evident.
But since September, we’re in the third phase called 'fall apart,' a stage in which many individuals simply ran out of resilience.
“Our regular resilience is not built for a pandemic that has lasted this long. We actually have to build in skills, tools and specific help and strategies to get us through this,” said Fishburn.
She said to maintain one’s mental health during this tough time, you need to keep working on building resilience which serves as a foundation to cope with the world around us.
Fishburn said mentally, it's very hard to stay apart from family and friends, to not give hugs, to not get hugs, to not be able to go to restaurants and gyms and do all the things that actually help people stay mentally well.
To get to the fourth phase, 'hope for 2021,' Fishburn said the community really needs to help each other with kindness, compassion and support even if it's just checking up on a neighbour or checking up on a friend.
This is what makes a difference. Fishburn said this is why CMHA WW is hosting monthly webinars to keep the community updated, this is why healthcare workers have stepped up to offer virtual counselling and more face to face counselling.
“We're all needing to do things differently right now to help each other get through the worst part. We're in the worst part of this pandemic,” said Fishburn.
To study the mental health impacts of COVID 19, CMHA conducted a nationwide survey in partnership with UBC researchers and found 44 per cent of Ontarians felt their mental health deteriorated since March.
They found that the second wave of the pandemic intensified feelings of stress, anxiety, despair, suicidal thoughts.
The CMHA says mental health is not an individual responsibility and policy-level interventions are required.
The problem is, only a few Ontarians are getting the mental health services and support they need, while many are relying on a combination of healthy and unhealthy strategies to cope.
It stated that even before the pandemic, the mental healthcare system in Canada was not meeting people’s needs due to long wait lists, access issues, inequity and underfunding.
Family Counselling and Support Services for Guelph-Wellington, which provides virtual and face-to-face counselling across Guelph and Wellington County, scrambled to respond to the rapidly growing need for support services since the pandemic began.
Right now, their distress lines are receiving 400 calls a week. They used to get 400 calls a month.
Joanne Young Evans, executive director of FCSSGW, said while the calls have increased, so has the intensity and complexity of those calls.
“It's everything from stress, anxiety and depression to thoughts of suicide, and those calls are increasing, the thoughts of suicide,” said Young Evans.
She said people reach out because they want someone to listen when they’re hurting especially around the holiday time when people are more anxious and upset than normal.
“For resilience, we have to continue to ensure that our services are there. Then it's getting people to reach out to those services. We need to keep operating, we need to continue to see people, we need to continue to do our counselling,” said Young Evans adding the FCSSGW hopes to increase support after Christmas and will continue to provide services even after vaccines are being administered.
She said many young children are traumatized because of this new world.
Young Evans recalls a recent incident in Fergus where she was walking on a trail behind a mother and her young child. The child turned around to see Young Evans walking without a mask and began screaming.
“The mom looked at me saying, ‘I’m really sorry,’” said Young Evans.
“For the little one, for some of them, this is all they’ve ever known.”
Young Evans said helping them build resilience is a challenge for parents, teachers and those in the mental health field.
“This isn't going to happen in a couple of months. This is going to happen in a couple of years,” said Young Evans.
“We're going to be dealing with issues that we're not even aware of yet.”
Jaime Bickerton, executive director of Bereaved Families of Ontario – Midwestern Region, said once the pandemic hit, feelings of isolation, disconnection, and loneliness intensified.
People could not grieve the way they wanted to or are used to, be it for a lost loved one or any other type of traumatic loss.
Bickerton points out that many times people feel they don’t have a right to grieve when they’ve lost their job or something traumatic happened, to which she points out, “grief is just as valid as when someone died. … It's the same emotion, it's the same feeling, it's just a different experience.”
She said not everybody needs support but for those who do, not having it can have long-term impacts such as long term feeling of isolation and poor mental health.
Earlier this month, Melanie Bluhm, a family physician at the Guelph Community Health Centre who works with families with high adverse childhood experience, spoke in a resilience webinar held for the community by the CMHA.
She said at the heart of best prevention and intervention is understanding your clients’ story through an adverse childhood experience (ACE) lens and focusing on relationship building.
She said the most crucial piece is about relationship building.
“As service providers, we have a responsibility to support ongoing relationships as well,” said Bluhm.
She also highlighted that school is the one place where kids can be away from chaos. Where they can build relationships with caring adults, be warm, get fed and be safe for a whole six hours.
Bluhm said family physicians and mental health workers need to be more engaged with the school to build those relationships with children.
Clinton said everyone in the community needs to be 'upstreamists' where we look at the social conditions around us across communities and across the country to see how we can make our world the best place to raise a child, to support families and to age well.
“Relationships absolutely matter,” said Clinton. “The heart of the matter is that we can build resilience even in the face of intense adversity through relationships.”
The series:
Monday, Part 1: 'I need the community willing to be vaccinated'
Tuesday, Part 2: The economy learns to adjust
Wednesday, Part 3: Rural issues, rural response
Thursday, Part 4: From stunned compliance to hope
Friday, Part 5: Hopefully a gentler, kinder place
