Mental Health Crisis Driven by Public Health Policy Trauma
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola
April 21, 2022
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
> The United States is facing a mental health crisis, experts say, noting were in dire need of more mental health professionals Nearly 1 in 3 27.3% of American adults now struggle with depression and/or anxiety > This is the price society is paying for ill-conceived, irrational pandemic measures and nonstop fearmongering > To treat everyone, each of the 33,000 practicing psychiatrists in the U.S. would have to see approximately 3,000 patients a year a patient load that simply isnt feasible > Those of us who have not succumbed to irrational fear (or worked our way out of it) can act as a lifeline to others by sharing information that empowers rather than enforces fear, and by being role models in the way we live our lives
The United States is facing a mental health crisis, experts say, noting were in dire need of more mental health professionals. Christin Drake, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, writes:1
Every day, people call my office looking for help: A loved one has not left their bed in a week. A father is experiencing panic symptoms while preparing his children for school. A young woman is using substances in a way that feels dangerous to her. These are not the worried well. They are people in crisis.
Their conditions are complex and acute, and require the expertise of a psychiatrist who can talk with them, assess possible medical causes for their problems, manage withdrawal, prescribe medications when needed, and connect with other providers ... Before the pandemic, I could almost always help. I would be able to find time to meet someone for a consultation, or make a few calls to secure the right referral.
But now, my every available hour even those that jut into my ability to meet my obligations to my family is full. My colleagues tell me the same. They are starting work earlier, working later, contending with long waitlists and their own limits. All the while, patients in crisis are going without psychiatric help.
Depression and Anxiety Are at All-Time Highs
According to the most recent Household Pulse Survey,2 conducted by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 27.3% of American adults now struggle with depression and/or anxiety, and thats in addition to the 40 million Americans who report substance use disorders3 and the 14 million who have more serious mental illnesses.4
There are about 33,000 practicing psychiatrists in the U.S.5 By my back-of-the-napkin math, if all of us were treating only people with depression or anxiety, each of us would have to see more than 3,000 patients a year, Drake notes.6
In short, there arent enough practicing psychiatrists to handle the burgeoning tsunami of mentally unwell Americans. There also arent enough residency positions available to significantly expand the profession any time soon.
The Price of Fearmongering
While Drake doesnt go into the causes behind the mental health crisis, its fairly obvious that this is the price society is paying for our governments ill-conceived and irrational pandemic measures and the nonstop fearmongering. NPR contributor Kat Lonsdorf describes the constant fear of kidney transplant patient Jullie Hoggan:7
While the surgery was successful and Hoggan is now vaccinated and boosted, she is still severely immunocompromised and has to take significant safety measures.
I'm so nervous. Like, my heart rate is through the roof when I'm out for anything, she said. And I wonder if I'm ever able to be out safely again and be normal and go out to a store. Am I going to be feeling that forever?
Hoggan works from home, rarely leaves the house, and when she does, it's incredibly stressful. Her husband and college-age daughter both wear masks at home and have to be extremely careful about who they see and what they do.
Hoggan's pandemic experience carries no violence and there have been no explosions or assault, which is why she has a hard time calling it trauma. But Arthur Evans, CEO of the American Psychological Association (APA), says viewing the world as unsafe can be a symptom of trauma.
A Nebulous and Hard-to-Define Trauma
As noted by Lonsdorf, trauma typically involves some kind of life- threatening event or something that leaves you feeling fearful and/or helpless. Many who have religiously followed mainstream news over the past two years have clearly been traumatized, feeling as though death is imminent and theres no escape. The death-dealing blow in the form of an invisible virus could come from anyone, including loved ones. No one was safe to be around.
Whats more, the pandemic wasnt an isolated incident that could be processed and recovered from. Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist with expertise in collective trauma, likens the pandemic to a slow-moving disaster that escalated in intensity over time and to this day doesnt have a clear endpoint.8
Not everyone agrees that what were seeing is the result of collective trauma, though. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score one of the most-sold books on Amazon during the pandemic is hesitant to categorize the pandemic as a collective trauma.
He tells Lonsdorf,9 "We need to be very precise because if we don't know what we are treating, we may give the wrong treatment. He believes we need a new term, a new language to accurately define our circumstances. "That's really what I'm encouraging us to do to really identify what is making us all feel like we're barely hanging on," he says.
Officials Are Unwilling to Let Go of the Fearmongering
Whatever we end up calling it, its clear that our governments and medias response to the pandemic has been a key causative factor behind this mental health crisis. Its also notable that even though COVID-19 has become endemic in most parts of the world, causing few deaths, the pandemic has not officially been declared over.
In early March 2022, the World Health Organization said discussions about when and how to declare an end to the pandemic were underway, but that we are not there yet.10
Denmark, the Netherlands and the U.K. have functionally declared an end to their national emergencies by lifting all or most restrictions, but other countries, such as New Zealand and Hong Kong, are moving in the opposite direction, renewing lockdown orders amid fresh surges in COVID cases (i.e., positive PCR tests, which doesnt mean people are dying or even getting seriously ill).11
Meanwhile in the U.S., April 13, 2022, the CDC extended for another 90 days the public health emergency thats been in effect since the pandemic began. In tandem, President Biden extended the mask mandates for airplanes and public transportation until May 3.12
In alternative media circles, fear of the virus has been tempered by more clearheaded analyses of statistics and data, showing that the real- world risk is actually quite limited, and that there are highly effective early treatments available even if you do get infected.
My guess is that those who now, two years in, are still struggling with overwhelming feelings of fear and anxiety about the virus are the ones who for whatever reason werent exposed to these comforting data, or chose to dismiss them (which is what mainstream media told them to do).
And, if they persist in following the legacy media, theres really no relief in sight for them. While many now accept COVID-19 as another version of, or addition to, the seasonal flu, and are going about their lives more or less as usual, the mainstream media are trying to pump up the fear level yet again with you guessed it another variant.13
This one is called Xe. Its said to be a combination of two previous subvariants of Omicron and the most contagious form yet. COVID-19 Could be Surging in the U.S. Right Now and We Might Not Even Know It, a headline for Time magazine announced April 11, 2022, adding:14
... as the country tries to move on from the pandemic, demand for lab- based testing has declined and federal funding priorities have shifted. The change has forced some testing centers to shutter while others have hiked up prices in response to the end of government-subsidized testing programs.
People are increasingly relying on at-home rapid tests if they decide to test at all. But those results are rarely reported, giving public health officials little insight into how widespread the virus truly is.
Truth Is a Big Part of the Remedy
This fearmongering is again based on the lie that the PCR test can identify an active infection (it cant), and the false idea that asymptomatic spread is a driver of infection (its not). Time magazine also promotes the false idea that the COVID shot is extremely effective at preventing severe disease and that Omicron causes milder symptoms only in healthy, vaccinated people, even though real-world data suggest otherwise on both accounts.
Theres no mention of the fact that the COVID shots may be responsible for more than 1.2 million injuries15 and are, by any metric, the most dangerous drugs ever to be released. Theres also no mention of the fact that most people are likely immune to Xe at this point, as it arose right on the heels of a major Omicron surge.
Even questions about remasking have popped up again. Is It Time to Start Masking Again? The Atlantic asked April 8, 2022.16 According to The Atlantic, in the face of new variants, we ought to prepare by having good masks on hand and being mentally ready to put them on again.
Its that kind of mental preparation to face death every day and the useless ritual of donning a mask that is driving people to the brink of their mental endurance. Masking was futile from the start, but that doesnt stop the mainstream media which gets its talking points from those trying to figure out how to shove The Great Reset down our collective throats from pushing this worn-out and wholly unscientific narrative.
1) Take 5,000 IUs of vitamin D-3 daily. D-3 is also a pro-hormone from which other hormones are made. I cured depression in a teenage girl when I told her that.
2) Take a blood test to make sure you have sufficient levels of all minerals. You will not feel well if your body does not work.
3) Avoid covid vaxxes. Catherine Austin Fitts said that covid vaxxes reduce your IQ by 7 points.