Category: Stress

Covid19 and Mental Health

It’s a well recognized fact that major, wide spread disasters often bring about unintended consequences. The Covid 19 worldwide pandemic has been such an event, causing unintended consequences for the provision of mental health services. While these consequences have been “unintended” they are not necessarily bad.

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Prior to the Covid19 pandemic, video conferencing was just taking on deep roots in the business world. Platforms like Skype, Zoom, and Lifesize Cloud, were valued for their different capabilities, but especially because the provided good security protocols against cyber criminals along with financial costs savings.

 

Some medical health care systems that served rural parts of America, where doctors were in short supply had also begun using video conferencing to provide expanded services to both patients and doctors living in remote and thereby often under served areas.

One such use of video conferencing is Project ECHO, https://echo.unm.edu/, which is generally University based, was already providing telehealth services to individuals, and consultation from medical specialists to rural doctors who were connected via the internet.

Outside of business and medical applications of video conferencing, there was simultaneously, a growing number of popular social media platforms that had become available on line. The more popular ones being Messenger, JOI, DUO, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Marco Polo, Face Time, Houseparty, Instagram, and Discord were quickly replacing texting and phone calls. But while these technologies and platforms were already in place prior to Covid19, their use was aimed mostly at general social sharing and entertainment.

Covid19 changed all of that at warp speed. The newly invoked public health protocols called for social distancing and shelter in place rules which meant that individual mobility and interpersonal contact was restrained in an effort to limit contagion of Covid19.

Personal protective equipment items such as disposable gloves and masks were being used for the times that individuals had to venture outside of their homes, causing further restraint. Workers and the business services they were part of were divided into essential and non-essential categories.

Any venue where a large gathering was possible was closed or severely limited in numbers. This included work sites, churches, schools, etc.

This sudden change in mobility and physical contact then created it’s own set of problems. Prior to the pandemic, Mental Health Service providers, had begun utilizing video technology to maximize mental health resources and save time, had to a limited degree, already been in place, but were used mainly as an option to the preferred face to face contacts. The reason? Insurance reimbursements. Most of the insurance payers would not reimburse for video therapeutic services. When individual therapists and mental health agencies attempted to limit their staffs exposure to Covid19, the use of video conferencing for staff working from home grew as fast as the virus!

Most clients had access to smart phones, which were capable of video conferencing and many consumers were already familiar with video communication thru their own personal use of social media. But this increased utilization of video conferencing was only the beginning for changes in Mental Health Services.

Covid19 introduced multiple mental and physical stressors across the board. There was no physical or emotional escape into a place of safety.

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Veterans Resources

I have worked with Vets from most of the service branches as a therapist in the last four years with much of my contact involved crisis interventions where there were some total melt-downs. The last incident involved a SWAT team deployment. Sometimes, folks tend to over-react when Vets have these melt-downs. Why? Well, not everyone is trained as a military sniper or Special Forces combatant, and that gets some special attention.

Personally, I grew up in a military family and spent a lot of time on Army, Navy and Airforce installations back then.

I experienced first hand the issues that occured when active duty military servicemen return to civilian life as Veterans and have serious re-integration issues.

Because of this professional and personal history of mine, working with Veterans experiencing personal issues is a passion of mine.

That said, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that PTSD is not exclusively a problem that is exclusively found in the Veteran communities. As you migh imagine, PTSD can occur from any numer of life events. The letter “P” stands for POST, the letter “T” stands for TRAUMATIC, the letter “S” stands for STRESS, and the letter “D” stands for DISORDER. You don’t see a V for Veteran because the disorder happens in many situations. Wartime or even deployment is just one paticular situation that Veterans are exposed to.

When military discharge of a person who has a known or even unknown PTSD diagnosis occurs, this greatly complicates the stresses of re-adjustment and re-integration back into civilian live. As you can see, for some Veterans, the reintegration itself can present a lot of adjustment issues. These same issues may serve as “triggers” for either a diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD condition.

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