It’s practically a truism at this point that COVID-19 has had horrific effects on the mental health of people writ large. Depression and anxiety have ravaged millions during the past few years, as this disease has cast a long and painful shadow over the early 2020s.
I believe that the dominant conversation surrounding the issue of mental health has been quite limited and failed to address the scope of the issue. The focus of the mainstream mental health advocacy during COVID was that people suffered from not being able to connect in person with loved ones, and having their daily routines affected tremendously. During the earliest periods of the pandemic – when the disease was cloaked in uncertainty, and countless were trapped in lockdown – these concerns were especially prescient, and they have continued to hold relevance in a world plagued by isolation and loneliness. This mass trauma should not be understated, and such pain deserves acknowledgment and relief.
However, such advocacy has failed to acknowledge is the uncomfortable fact that witnessing people blatantly ignoring COVID protocol and endangering those around them has proved incredibly detrimental to those especially concerned and/or marginalized by the pandemic.
Immunocompromised and disabled people have had their COVID-related concerns brushed off time and time again, as mainstream mental health advocacy delegates a certain class of people as the people whose peace of mind matters most. The right of abled and non-immunocompromised people to forgo mask-wearing for their mental health has trumped the right of those concerned about rising infection to feel safe in their communities. Governments, major media outlets, and institutions have begun to care – selectively – about mental health. Immunocompromised people have been largely abandoned, as their mental health has been continually de-prioritized. This is grossly unacceptable.
“Mental health” is a nebulous term recently thrust into the limelight that often classifies vast swathes of diverse people as sharing universal desires. The specific needs of marginalized people are frequently ignored as neoliberal mental health activism upholds the dominant strata of power in order to ease the suffering of a privileged few. Without accounting for the power dynamics that shape our world, calls for change ring hollow and inadequately contend with the scope of the problem.
Conversations about the mental health of immunocompromised people have barely begun to break through to the mainstream. The reason for this is simple: their voices are inconvenient to people who want to “go back to normal” without considering the real human cost. Immunocompromised people have been left to fend for themselves in a hostile, uncaring world.
If we are to confront the thorny issue of mental suffering during the pandemic, the first thing we need to do is confront the questions that belie our “common sense”: ‘What is mental health? Who is suffering, how, and why?’ Such critical interrogation is the groundwork upon which we build a mentally well world.
Recommended reading: Abled-Bodied Leftists Cannot Abandon Disabled Solidarity to “Move On” From COVID, Pandemic Year 3
