Because it is important

mental health

Having worked for a period of good nine years, I feel quite exhausted at times. It feels as if I need some break to sit back, ponder, reflect, rest or often do nothing. Also, I often relate this exhaustion with the feeling of loneliness. In analysing the General Social Survey of 2016, the Harvard Business Review found that compared with roughly 20 years ago, people are twice as likely to report that they are always exhausted. Close to 50 per cent of people say they are often or always exhausted due to work. This is a shockingly high statistic – and it’s a 32 per cent increase from two decades ago. What’s more in the research is that there is a significant correlation between feeling lonely and work exhaustion: The more people are exhausted, the lonelier they feel.

With the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic, unlike most of the people, I was quite content with me being isolated at home. For an introvert like me, it was a smooth sailing as I had been waiting for this time for so long; the time when I would be finally home doing little work and more rest. However, after three months, I experienced greater isolation than before and it evoked emotional exhaustion within my mind and body. Staying home started to take a toll on me as for any other working person because we weren’t used to it. Monotony had hit me hard and I encountered depression, anxiety and an urge to go back to work and get busy with it ‘again’; after all, excess of everything is bad. However, different people are going through different emotions and have different opinion regarding going back to work post lockdown...

The pandemic has submerged many households in Pakistan (and the world over) with fear and risk associated with coronavirus. Many people are following strict SOPs and have gotten themselves into isolation since March. Still after the lockdown, when almost all offices, restaurants, marriage halls, schools and colleges have opened and are following SOPs, most of the people are still locked inside their homes; showing great frenzy. They haven’t resumed work or going out as they used to. Sadly, they are thinking about what the virus can do to themselves but aren’t focusing on their mental health at all. They aren’t ready to accept the fact that coronavirus has become a part of our lives and living with these SOPs is the ‘new normal’, let’s just say.

Our working lives were changed enormously when lockdown started. As lockdown eased, our working lives changed again. For many of us coming out of lockdown was not a choice. Across the country people are being called to return to work, even when the official advice is to work from home wherever possible. Sometime, this won’t be possible and the prospect of return carries with it is a need to weigh up the potential safety risks to ourselves and family, with the need to earn money, restart the economy or provide service to others.

We may have a lot of mixed feelings about coming back to work – it may be exciting and something we’ve wished for or we may be angry that we are being forced back too fast. We may be worried about public transport and social distancing on the job. We may be angry or frustrated with our employers, or at the guidelines available from government for our industry. It may be that the circumstances of our work cause us anxiety or frustration – especially if other people’s choices or behaviours increases our risk of catching the virus.

If you are on leave, you may have found ways to occupy your time – with family commitments, volunteering, hobbies or by learning new skills. Reconnecting with work might take time, and hopefully you will have time to plan when you are likely to go back, or even have the opportunity to return gradually.

It’s worth approaching a return to work like a return from any long absence – gradually picking up routines and setting down the things you’ve been doing during lockdown. But no matter what you choose; to stay home or resume work, you have to take care of your mental health in any situation.

Every year, World Mental Health Day is observed on 10 October by World Health Organization, with the overall objective of raising awareness of mental health issues around the world and mobilising efforts in support of mental health. The Day provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.

This year’s World Mental Health Day comes at a time when our daily lives have changed considerably as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The past months have brought many challenges: for health-care workers, providing care in difficult circumstances, going to work fearful of bringing Covid-19 home with them; for students, adapting to taking classes from home, with little contact with teachers and friends, and anxious about their futures; for workers whose livelihoods are threatened; for the vast number of people caught in poverty or in fragile humanitarian settings with extremely limited protection from Covid-19; and for people with mental health conditions, many experiencing even greater social isolation than before. And this is to say nothing of managing the grief of losing a loved one, sometimes without being able to say goodbye.

Given past experience of emergencies, it is expected that the need for mental health and psychosocial support will substantially increase in the coming months and years. Investment in mental health programmes at the national and international levels, which have already suffered from years of chronic underfunding, is now more important than it has ever been.

This is why the goal of this year’s World Mental Health Day campaign is increased investment in mental health.