Real Talk: How’s Your Mental Health?
We are now past the most acute phase of the pandemic, and 4+ years out, I feel like I’m hearing too little about adult mental health.
Does anyone else feel like we stopped talking enough about our mental health lately?
We’ve all probably seen some of the statistics: America’s mental health was not great before the pandemic and stress, grief, and isolation exacerbated by COVID made everything worse. In 2021, 40% of adults were experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Populations most impacted include young people, mothers, people of color, and those experiencing job loss. This resulted in a surge in demand for therapists, and right now 13% of American adults take anti-depressants, with higher rates among women and people over 60.
If there is any silver lining to this crisis, I think it has to be that people are much more willing to talk openly about their mental health realities. Some important topics, like taking anti-depressants or going to therapy have been de-stigmatized a lot in the last few years. I’m totally down for openly about mental health, which is why my Double Shift co-host Angela Garbes and I did, in two podcast episodes in 2021 (The Moms are Not OK part 1 and part 2.) We both talked about our own experiences, we heard from listeners and talked with Psychologist Dr. Amber Thornton about some of the social forces at play making it so hard on moms’ mental health during that time.
We are now past the most acute phase of the pandemic, and 4+ years out, I feel like I’m hearing too little about adult mental health. Right now, teen mental health seems much more in the the news, but I’m suspicious that’s a sign things have improved much on a population level for grown ups. Yes, we are no longer in lockdown or being held hostage by virtual school, but mothers and caregivers are still being faced with endless childcare stressors, more demands to return to in-person work, fears around lack of access to reproductive healthcare or even being forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, and more financial precarity with the ending of pandemic-era safety nets. Add to that mix the constant gun violence, political instability, brutal wars around the world, and existential climate crises... it’s a lot. So I’d love to have an honest and openhearted conversation about how y’all are doing, mental health-wise.
Here’s where my mental health stands right now: