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COVID Aftermath: A Mental Health Crisis · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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And I thought that was like for everybody. Sorry, I remember feeling worried
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that when I turned eighteen, like my bags are packed, my friends are
0:06
kicking. Yeah, I thought it was so ingrained, Like I thought that
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was it. This is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano,
0:16
a Child and Adolescent psychiatry fellow, and I'm Eddie Creo, a licensed clinical
0:20
therapist. Our podcast is here because we wanted to start a much data conversation
0:24
about mental health. Our goal is to teach you as much as we can
0:28
by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in the mental health field. We
0:31
will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance use, personality disorders,
0:37
and many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We
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hope you enjoyed today's episode. M MHC is a production of Spreaker from iHeartMedia,
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A Good Eye and Welcome to Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin.
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I'm here with more a good friend Idy. How are you doing my
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I like how you took time to think of like, Okay, what am
1:02
I going to do for this? That's what came out because I was I
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thought I was going to be able to predict, and I was wrong.
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So here we go. You know, that's the best part about my mind
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is sometimes I will say I was thinking of something, and then when I
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try to go back on what was I thinking, it just goes blank.
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I don't know, just clean slave, find dining and breathing. Where's that
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from? You never watched that SpongeBob episode? Oh man, all right,
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I think that episode see in two weeks. Well, today, we can't
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cancel the episode because we have a very good topic that everyone needs to hear
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about. Share it with your friends, share it with your kids. We're
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talking about our current mental health crisis. If you did not know, there
1:51
is a mental health crisis in our country and the world right now. So
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we want to raise awareness to this issue in the hopes that we normalize it
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for people help. People will understand that a lot of people are struggling with
2:01
this, and we hope that this is an inspiration that people will go get
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help if they are struggling. And honestly, the COVID nineteen pandemic and the
2:10
subsequent shutdown, we're traumatic events in our lives and they changed life for a
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lot of people, almost every person on this earth. So if we want
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to heal from that trauma, we have to start being intentional about healing from
2:24
it. So our mindfulness question of the day is, Eddie, when you're
2:30
feeling anxious, how do you respond to it? How do you like to
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get that anxiety down? Not? Well? It is not good. Perfect
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example, I got a text from a coworker today that said, hey,
2:44
when you're done with your meeting, we need to talk. And then my
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mind raced at like one hundred miles an hour, like shit, what did
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I do? When'd I do wrong? What's happening? What's the emergency?
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There's something wrong happened. I still struggle with dealing with my anxiety. I
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have to remind myself like, hey, like these are like catastrophic thoughts.
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You're catastrophizing. Let's slow down a little bit. Something that helped me.
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I forgot where I saw it, but it was like this like practice of
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like taking in two deep breaths through your nose and then like really quickly like
3:16
and then blowing it out and doing that multiple times in a row like help
3:21
to like bring me back to normal. And I don't know if it actually
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decreased my heart rate, but it helped me feel like I'm It helps me
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feel like I'm back at a normal resting rate when I start to feel anxious.
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Other times trying to just remind myself that I'm feeling anxious and I'll be
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okay. But I think that breathing one most recently, has been the most
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helpful. Cool. Yeah, I would say, yeah, breathing for me
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too is a big one. And there are scientific studies that show deep breathing,
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circular breathing helps to slow down your heart rate is slow down that mind
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activate your parasympathetic, rest and digest nervous system. So it's not just like
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mumbo jumbo. This stuff actually scientifically backed. I have positive and negative coping
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mechanisms for anxiety. Some of my negative ones like, you know, I
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want to drink if I'm have a stressful day or I feel angry or irritable,
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I want to come home and just have a beer, have a little
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glass of scotch, something like that. More of my positive ones like breathing,
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deep breathing and playing music, singing, being with people, socializing.
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But a lot of times I have to be cognizant of whether I choose a
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positive coping mechanism or a negative coping mechanism. I don't want to jump too
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far into it because I know it's it's farther down in our storytime one,
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but definitely like when COVID was really like brand new and we're still trying to
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figure shit out. I started to I would like go to work, I'd
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come home and I'd have like an alcoholic beverage and it would be like one
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or two a night. And I think I went like a couple of weeks
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of doing that, and at one point I was like, I need to
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stop this because this is not helpful, Like this is this is not good
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for me. I do not feel good like this, even if it's only
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one or two, like it shouldn't be. And I guess if honestly,
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if anything, it's probably helped like guide my work a little bit with kids
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and teens of like needing to have that own practice, not that I had
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to do to be able to teach kids and teens, but like that practice
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of like, Okay, this is not good for me. I need to
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stop. So tomorrow when I get home from work, no beer, no
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white claws, because if you remember white claws were like blowing up at Oh.
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Yeah, like that was that was the thing, and that might have
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single handedly saved a lot of people. Not really, but like that was.
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That was a huge thing. So yeah, we can talk a little
5:46
more when we get the story time. But yeah, I remember, like
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the start of it. I was like, man, that was drinking not
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a not good amount of alcohol. It wasn't even like excessive. It was
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just not necessary for me. Yeah. When I becomes an everyday thing,
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then it's like, well, what are you really doing it for if it's
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yeah, something that just becomes routine. Yeah. So there was a new
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Gallop Pole and I believe Gallup is based out of Omaha, Nebraska, which
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this actually might be our last episode made in Omaha, Nebraska. No,
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we'll we'll have one more because I'm going to be moving soon. But so,
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yeah, a Gallop Space in Omaha, Nebraska. And their new study
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that or new survey that just came out showed that depression in the United States
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just hit a new all time high. Say say that means job security for
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yours truly, and which is not what we're worried about. We're worried about
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the health and wellness of the American people. But this article will be in
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the show notes if you want to read it yourself. Some of the major
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highlights from the Gallop Pole showed that women and young adults have seen the largest
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rise in depression rates, but that for black and Hispanic adults, they're seeing
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a rise in depression that's twice as fast as it is for whites. So
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there's lots of specific areas are hit harder than other areas. You say highlights,
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it feels like low lights. I don't know. Yeah, that's fair.
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Major takeaways. Yea, yeah, I alluded to it earlier. But
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I'll hit us off with with storytime really just with how well we'll talk about
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today, how the pandemic almost sped up what was probably inevitable, which was
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a mental health crisis happening. And I feel like I remember even before twenty
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twenty, Like they're definitely from March twenty twenty two now, Like it's a
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big blur in my brain. And I think that's a big blur for a
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lot of people, which which goes in line with having a traumatic experience,
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like your memory is going to be impaired. But looking back like then,
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like there's definitely talks before the pandemic of a mental health crisis. Now it's
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like significant and like right in our face. But I know for me,
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like when COVID started and when shutdown started to happen, like if I remember
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correctly, it was it was a little slow, like where you'd get grumblings,
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like I remember I went to Hawaii and San and San Diego in the
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month of February twenty twenty and both times, like in both places I went
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like people mentioned it, but no one like really like, oh yeah,
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we'll see what happens. And then like once shutdown started to happen, I
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remember, like a basketball game, an NBA game got canceled, and that's
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when I was like, oh shit, like this is for real, this
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is not good, and just remembering like things just started to shift quickly and
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slowly, like at the same time, if that makes sense, like slowly,
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like less and less co workers were coming to work. They started to
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space us out more like hey, you come these days, I'll come these
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days. Hey, okay, now you can work from home and you know
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you can do these things. And the more that started to happen, the
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more like I started to feel burnt out, but not because I was like
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working too much. It was just a different experience, like trying to deal
9:05
with internet issues with a client, or trying to call a client and try
9:09
to do a session over the phone, which is painful if you've ever done
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one, like a phone session, and even telehealth, like I struggle with
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telehealth. That is not my thing. So more power to you if you're
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a telehealth provider. But those things were really hard for me. The new
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experiences were not fun. I did not enjoy it. It made me feel
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burnt out. At that point, I was seeing less clients, I was
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spending less time with my coworkers. I hadn't seen Kevy in once, I
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hadn't seen friends, my family. I went from I think March of twenty
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twenty until like June of twenty twenty one before I saw my parents and before
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I saw a lot of my family, just because of the way things were
9:48
and the jobs that I had and wanting to take time off. But it
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was like a weird like when I hit December of twenty twenty, I was
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about to get like my first COVID shot and I was all excited about it,
9:58
but then and our job had like a rule that if you leave the
10:03
state, like you have to isolate for two weeks when you get back,
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which, you know what is messed up because I followed the rules and I
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had a coworker who who left and then didn't follow the rules, and that
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pissed me off because I could have got Yeah anyway, whatever, man,
10:18
I was doing the right thing. But yeah, it was just like this
10:20
this extremely traumatic experience, like my people were taken away, my job in
10:26
a sense was taken away, and it was really hard. It was all
10:30
new and then all the new things coming at one time like burn me out
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a lot. Yeah. I feel for you, man, Yeah, it
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sounds like it was a tough time for you. It was not ideal.
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I mean I'm like, I'm like trivializing that they can seem like it's like
10:43
a whatever. But yeah, I mean I guess we can kind of joke
10:46
about it now. It's it's just been such a weird, weird we're all
10:50
like trauma bonded in a different way. Yeah, for sure, I would
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say like a lot. I've met some doctors who would describe that as,
10:56
oh, that's a suboptical situation. It was like, say that sucks,
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man, Oh that's suboptimal anyway, the second right that sucks in a therapeutic
11:09
No, like, that's fine, epic, epic. The EHR will accept
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it. For my story, I actually I hate to say it. I
11:20
had a great pandemic because because I had my wife at home and we got
11:28
to spend a ton of time together. She was completely off work, I
11:31
had reduced hours, and we were hanging out watching movies and it was really
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we had a lot of fun. We really isolated for a couple of months
11:41
before we decided that, like, okay, we we gotta have some outside
11:46
contact. And we had some friends that we just like said, okay,
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you two are in our bubble. Now we're going to hang out with you,
11:50
but only you two. And we just like rode bikes all summer and
11:54
went camping and it was just a lot of fun. So COVID wasn't that
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bad for me. I feel like I was really lucky, because now in
12:03
retrospect, I can see how it was really horrible for a lot of people,
12:07
especially if they didn't have what I had, if they didn't have someone
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that they loved and enjoyed being around at home with them to keep them company
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and access to the outdoors and exercise. So if someone was if I had
12:22
to spend that time alone or with someone who was toxic, that would have
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been horrible. That would have been an even worse situation. I think Bo
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Burnham's comedy special Inside kind of gave you a glimpse of just how deep down
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the depression hole someone can go when they had to isolate that much and be
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only by themselves. So that's a really traumatic thing that a lot of people
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had to go through, and I think a lot of people have to start
12:50
to heal from that trauma if we want to get through it. So I
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always wonder like there were multiple things that happened during isolation during the pandemic,
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where people started doing more drugs, more alcohol, and social media and phone
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addiction went through the roof too, because that's all that people had. So
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I think we're starting to see the effects of that, the effects of the
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trauma, the effects of the increase in addiction, and I think we got
13:16
to start being mindful of what happened to us so that we can try and
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fix it. Yeah, I mean, if you look at like for me,
13:24
being in a school setting every day, like kids still trying to get
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used to like being in school and like not having things online all the time.
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I think for some people they really benefited from online school, Like you
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can do things at your own pace, you can get things done whenever,
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you know, there's that part, But now like having to be maybe held
13:43
accountable a little more often, having more deadlines, Like that's really stressful.
13:48
And to go from what was it so the end of spring twenty twenty I
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think here in Oregon it was basically then fall of twenty twenty and then students
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might have came back and like spring of twenty twenty one, like late twenty
14:01
twenty one, basically a whole year of not being in school. And then
14:05
we really saw it in fall of twenty twenty one, where like we had
14:09
tenth graders and ninth graders who had never been to high school, like actually
14:13
been to high school now full time, full go high school experience. That
14:18
was a mess, Like it was not We had issues left and right,
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Like the counseling center was popping, like it was busy all the time.
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And I think we're still seeing effects even at the start of this school year,
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having the new ninth graders who are just middle schoolers coming still trying to
14:33
learn that part and almost having like their their typical development slowed down in terms
14:39
of like maturity, brain development, social skills, cognitive skills, and then
14:45
being thrust again into the high school experience, like it's it's been tough,
14:48
Like it's been really hard for kids to try to basically catch up. What
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is it You're like building the wagon, like as you go, like you're
14:56
like the wheels are turning, You're trying to like build the the wagon.
15:00
I don't know, I might have made that shit up, but like it's
15:03
tough, man, You're trying to figure it out. Why you're taking five
15:05
classes five days a week with seventeen hundred other kids. That's a suboptimal situation.
15:13
Great callback, I would definitely say that as a suboptimal situation. Yeah,
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I know personally, and I don't have big epidemiologic numbers to back this
15:24
up, but I did notice that after the pandemic, school avoidance just went
15:31
through the room. Oh yeah, so many kids were just like I am
15:35
not going back to school, Like so many kids just flat out refused to
15:39
go back. And kids were getting put in the PRTF, the psychiatric residential
15:45
treatment facility because a judge would order them to go there and the hospital couldn't
15:48
turn them away because it was court ordered. But their only complaint was they
15:52
refused to go to school. It's like, that's not a mental health problem.
15:56
Yeah, so yeah, it overburned our system too. Yeah, the
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school avoidance, like is is real? My goodness? Yeah, and a
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lot of that is anxiety. Kids were just like I don't want to go
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to school. It's overwhelming for me. I was out for a year,
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so I'm not used to it. So it's I feel for the kids too.
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They're not just avoiding it because they're they're just being sassy or naughty,
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as a lot of people like to describe kids as. Yeah, it's it's
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tough because like people will say, like your kids are soft, like get
16:27
over it, Like, hey, man, like we just dealt with a
16:30
lot of ship for three years, Like what do you want? What do
16:33
you mean? Get over it? Like it's easy for you because you're a
16:34
full grown adult, Like you you were better better suited, like you were
16:40
an adult, your brain was developed, and like you had thirteen year old
16:44
kids who were locked in there and you're not locked but they were just stuck
16:45
in their room for hours at a time, for months at a time,
16:48
for a year at a time. That's not fair to put that the same
16:52
rules to the emb same expectations to them as a full grown adult. Yeah,
16:56
have some grace for those children, you know, some stats and facts
17:00
for you. We got a lot of stats and facts because this is based
17:03
on that Gallop pole. But according to that new Gallup poll, twenty nine
17:07
percent of Americans have been diagnosed with depression at some point in their life.
17:11
That's almost thirty percent, and that's up nearly ten percent since twenty fifteen.
17:18
So people are getting depressed more and more and getting diagnosed with depression more and
17:22
more. I do a Managing the High School Experience presentation to the sophomore health
17:27
classes first and second trimester of school, and I'm gonna have to update my
17:32
stats because I think the most recent stat I have is like twenty nineteen ish
17:36
in terms of teenage rates of depression. And I've even said in the presentation,
17:40
like this is what we have from twenty nineteen, but I would be
17:42
willing to bet it's much higher now, and like absolutely like it's it's going
17:47
to be higher, So I have to update my stuff. Yeah, Gallup
17:51
started tracking depression rates in twenty fifteen, and you can definitely see a huge
17:55
increase during COVID. So now over one third of women, about thirty six
17:59
thirty six point seven percent, have been diagnosed with depression compared to twenty point
18:03
four percent of men. Depression of women seems to be rising at double the
18:07
rate of depression for men. An adults age nineteen to twenty nine, we're
18:11
just outside of that, had the highest overall rate of depression at twenty four
18:17
point six percent in twenty two percent of and this was in quotes Northern American
18:22
adults, so I wasn't quite sure what that meant. Were they all in
18:25
Michigan and Wisconsin or but anyway had severe impairment in their ability to perform their
18:30
daily activities for a period of two weeks or more because of their depression.
18:34
So for twenty two percent of people, depression is impacting their lives severely and
18:41
significantly. That's a huge amount. That's a lot of daily lives impacted.
18:45
So why is this happening? We don't really know. In science, in
18:51
studies, it's really hard to say X equals why this is what's leading to
18:56
this, Especially when we're reactive to it. We're only getting the aftermath of
19:00
it and trying to piece it together as Okay, why is this happening now?
19:04
So we don't know for sure, but Gallup recommended some things in their
19:08
poll as to why this is happening. They said that COVID brought about a
19:12
lot of social isolation and the increasing loneliness and fears of infection increased anxiety.
19:18
A lot of the frontline workers faced serious burnout issues, and there was an
19:23
increasing substance use during that time. You know, I think about the frontline
19:27
workers and facing burnout and then now I can't even remember where it was,
19:33
but hearing about nurses who were getting ready to strike because the hospital didn't want
19:37
to pay them like fair wages, and it's like the switch up is messed
19:42
up twenty twenty The people are heroes twenty twenty three. You get paid enough
19:48
and be quiet like that. People are only heroes until they try and get
19:52
more money from corporate America. Yeah, and then I think Justin's heard it.
19:56
I've heard it, like a ton of stories of just kids, teens,
20:00
adults who've never had a problem with substances, but then turning to substances
20:04
I mean we kind of alluded to it a little earlier, Like I didn't
20:08
have a full blown, like substance use disorder when it came to alcohol,
20:11
but I definitely was having an issue. Like I was using it as a
20:15
coping skill and it was not a good coping skill. We've talked about all
20:18
the reasons why alcohol is not the best for you, but I was using
20:22
it even though I knew all that, I was still using it as a
20:25
way to like wind down at the end of the day, and like that
20:26
was not the best. Other issues was limited mental health resources. So if
20:30
you look back at that time, let's take like May or June of twenty
20:33
twenty, for example, you're getting insurance companies, You're getting like federal regulations
20:38
who are starting to allow like okay, fine, like tell you can do
20:41
telehealth appointments, We'll reimburse for telehealth. Then you get a bunch of people
20:45
who are trying to switch over to telehealth. We had for us, for
20:48
example, when I worked for the county, it was like we tried using
20:51
Skype, which real quick, Skype had a big, big head start on
20:56
all these other companies, and they did not come through. When it aims
21:00
to video calling, but there was Skype. People tried to use Zoom Zoom
21:03
Zoom is the one. Right. There's this company called go to Meeting.
21:07
A lot of mental health providers, therapists use this thing called doxy dot me
21:11
something like that. Everyone's trying to figure out how to be a telehealth provider.
21:14
Everyone's trying to figure out how to get you forms and things that you
21:17
need to sign over the computer. Everyone's trying to figure everything out on the
21:19
fly. Same thing like I said before, of like trying to build the
21:22
wagon while you're writing in it. I think I've made that. Is that
21:26
a real thing? I've never heard of it before, but I like it
21:30
makes sense. But yeah, it's like it was. People were still were
21:36
learning as they're trying to help at the same time, and it was just
21:38
a big old mess limited mental health resource left and right, fingers crossed,
21:42
knock on wood. I think we're hopefully on the other side of that,
21:48
Like things are seeming a little more like if I, for example, if
21:52
I send out I don't know, like ten email inquiries to two therapists who
21:56
say they have availability, I'll probably get like thirty to fifty percent response back.
22:03
They'll say they have availability, so I can at least provide families with
22:07
some people who are available now. I will say though, that it seems
22:18
like most people who I have talked to who are trying to find mental health
22:22
resources, most of them when they do it on their own and they don't
22:26
really know the system very well, they say nothing's available, everything's four to
22:32
five to six months out. When they get a little bit of help,
22:36
it gets better and it gets down to like maybe around a month. But
22:40
yeah, the average lay person trying to find mental health resources just feels so
22:44
stuck and they feel like, well, I might be fine in five to
22:47
six months, so may as well just keep drinking and just hope it goes
22:51
away. Like I can look at you know, psychology today, or in
22:56
the area here Portland's Therapy Center, or look different agencies and be like okay,
23:02
like this is kind of where we're sitting. But for someone who doesn't
23:04
have to do that as part of their job, that's kind of intimidating.
23:07
Yeah, for sure, focusing on women specifically because we try to be a
23:15
very open and friendly to women sort of podcast. If you didn't hear our
23:18
postpartument depression episode, go back and check it out. But women have historically
23:23
reported higher levels of depression, and women were more likely to lose their jobs
23:30
or leave the workforce during COVID because a lot of times kids had to be
23:33
home from school full time and who was going to look after them, So
23:37
it was the moms who tended to leave the workforce because of that. And
23:41
apparently women make up the majority of the workforce in the United States in terms
23:47
of healthcare, so a lot of that healthcare burden, women shoulder most of
23:52
that burden on their own. So women are getting burned out in this country
23:56
even faster than men. And we talked about it in like the Postpartum depress
24:00
an episode of like there's a lot of being stacked up against our women and
24:03
our female identifying people in this country, in our communities, Like there's a
24:07
lot of things stacked up against them. The more we can be aware of
24:11
it, the more we can help and support them. I think that's really
24:12
important. An article from CNN in October of twenty twenty two found that ninety
24:18
percent of Americans think that we are currently in a mental health crisis. Good
24:22
job, ninety percent of Americans, You're correct. The CDC found that drug
24:27
overdose deaths peaked in twenty twenty one. I think we talked about that in
24:32
our opioid episodes. So if you if you haven't checked that one out,
24:33
that is a good episode. Two. We think all our episodes are good,
24:37
but you don't have to listen to all of them. In twenty twenty,
24:40
er visits for adolescents jumped by thirty one percent, and then then LGBTQ
24:45
survey participants showed that they were more likely to be anxious during COVID and during
24:49
the pandemic. One thing I wanted to also think about and point out,
24:55
like with the pandemic, even though it's it's when did h the thing gets
25:00
signed like a month or two ago? That said that the pandemics like officially
25:03
over. Yeah, that's right, fairly recent. Like even though it's like
25:07
quote over, like, it's still not like we're gonna have to deal with
25:11
the residual effects from it for a long time, Like it's going to take
25:14
a while to really fix help support especially our young people that went through this.
25:22
So I think it's important that we acknowledge that and we pay attention to
25:26
that because it's I feel like the more that time goes on. The more
25:30
here from parents, or the more I hear from adults like, oh,
25:32
they just need to get over it. Things are fine, things are done,
25:33
and it's like things are not going to be fine for a long time.
25:37
It's gonna take a while, multiple cycles of kids going through middle school,
25:41
high school before we get back to a situation where we get students who
25:45
have never had to do with that before. Yeah, and we really want
25:49
to emphasize too, that we have to be intentional about healing from this.
25:53
I think it's funny. A comparison I want to make is you know how
25:57
when you talked to people about how they lived through like the Great Depression,
26:03
and they would store all their money in a mattress because they were afraid of
26:07
banks. Like I wonder what little quirks our generation will have because we lived
26:11
through the pandemic, like buying extra food, hoarding toilet paper, like every
26:17
time I leave the house. I used to say Walakey's phone, but now
26:21
I say Walakey's phone mask, Like all those little things that changed everyday life
26:26
because of the pandemic. Let's just say, like the mask on the on
26:30
your like automatic car knob with the one what does that even call where you
26:33
go from park to reverse? Whatever that is the shifter, the shifter having
26:40
like multiple masks on the shifter having a box of masks like in my desk
26:45
at work. Like, there's definitely gonna be things. Yeah, there's things
26:48
and things that we're all going to remember. Yeah, So we don't want
26:52
to overload you too much with stats and facts, but we want to tell
26:56
you some things that we think on a personal level, what MMA see things
27:00
might be contributing to the mental health crisis as well. We've talked about it
27:03
a lot on the show. I did a whole ted talk on it.
27:07
But smartphone and social media addiction leading to more isolation. I noticed that when
27:12
people are on their phones more, they connect with other people in real life
27:17
less, and that lack of that social interaction, that social capital, it
27:22
can do things to your mental health. It can make it worse. We
27:26
mentioned earlier, but kids refusing to go to school. We notice that a
27:30
lot of times your kids have anxiety about going back to school now, And
27:33
anxiety just went through the roof for kids during COVID, and a lot of
27:38
times the parents will accommodate that anxiety. They'll say, oh, well,
27:42
it's hard for you, so you don't have to go to school. We'll
27:45
switch you to online school, we'll do something else, we'll do reduced hours.
27:49
And unfortunately, I understand that parents want to do what's best for their
27:53
kids, but when it comes specifically to anxiety, one of the best ways
27:59
to address anxiety is through exposure to the things that gives you anxiety, especially
28:03
when they're not going to hurt you. Like if you're in a traumatic situation,
28:07
you don't want to be around people who might cause trauma. That makes
28:11
sense. But if you are wondering whether it's the right decision to pull your
28:15
kid out of school because they have anxiety, try to make it work.
28:19
Try to try to encourage them to get back into school. Give the therapy
28:26
that's okay, but try and push through the anxiety around school. Anxiety oftentimes
28:32
is the fear of the unknown and not knowing what's going to happen and convincing
28:36
yourself almost that or having these thoughts that something really bad is going to happen.
28:40
The more we avoid it, the more those thoughts get stronger, like
28:42
yeah, you know, we're protecting ourselves from dealing with something that's going to
28:47
be really scary and really dangerous, Like Justin says, when you can have
28:49
that example of like, oh, okay, I was safe. I went
28:52
to school and it kind of sucked. My teacher was not the greatest,
28:56
but I was okay, I was safe. The more we do that and
29:00
I know that's not it doesn't it's not a one size fits all for every
29:03
kid in their situation, but absolutely like experiencing that it's not going to be
29:07
the worst thing possible is really helpful for combating your anxiety. Some of the
29:12
things that we think have contributed to the mental health crisis. My favorite topic
29:18
political factors ted that crews no, but in all seriousness, I mean we
29:23
talked in our postpartum episode, like attacks on women's rights, like that is
29:29
going on now, there's attacks on the LGBTQ plus community. All are bullshit,
29:33
All are not okay. When it comes to attacking somebody's humans rights,
29:37
you got to you gotta go do something else. Like that's not even like
29:40
a political issue anymore. That's just like you being a piece of shit issue.
29:42
Sorry, Justin, I'm cussing too much. Next is the general political
29:48
climate, and then the twenty four hour news cycle there's always something. If
29:52
you know those people that always have CNN or Foxes even on both sides,
29:55
that always have those news news stations, news channels open, there's always something.
30:00
There's always some type of breaking news. But if you really look at
30:03
it, like I've seen it, like if I'm waiting for my car at
30:06
the dealership or if I'm waiting for I guess car is a good example,
30:10
getting my car service, and like CNN is on something will say breaking news
30:12
and you're like, oh man, and you like direct your attention to it,
30:15
and then you like listen to it and it's like it's really not that
30:18
breaking, that's not really breaking news. It's just it's whatever. But then
30:22
there's like this like hyper fixation on everything needing to be breaking news, which
30:26
makes us feel like on edge a lot more often than we need to.
30:30
If you're watching TV and your TV channel is telling you breaking news every three
30:33
minutes, your thoughts are like god, damn, like this sums wrong all
30:37
the time. Like that is not helpful. It's not helpful for your mental
30:40
health, and it's not good to just have that type of news always be
30:42
consumed by you. And then right now, this country seems to put the
30:47
rights of corporations, the super wealthy, the police, and politicians over the
30:49
wellbeing of the people. That's our opinion. We're not going to back down
30:56
on that, but that's really what it's starting to feel like that that's how
31:00
the regular people, even the people who are helpers, the health professionals,
31:03
the other citizens, we're in second or third place compared to like the people
31:11
who are empowered, the people who are in charge. Capitalism can be a
31:14
good thing, but I think it's maybe gone too far in this country and
31:18
we're not we're not protecting the people. This country doesn't really seem to be
31:22
by the people of the people for the people anymore. But yeah, that's
31:26
way too political. Lifestyle issues that we think might have changed as a result
31:32
of the pandemic. But a new poll just came out. A new study
31:36
showed that the diets of young people in this country are now about two thirds
31:41
highly processed foods, which highly processed foods are terrible for your physical and your
31:48
mental health. We always say the four pillars of mental health in this country
31:52
are diet, exercised sleep, and stress management. If you look at diet
31:56
over the past twenty thirty years, in this country. It has gotten terrible.
32:00
We have foods that are terrible or super low in vitamins and minerals because
32:06
it's ultra processed, it's low in water, it's low in fiber. Pretty
32:08
much processing the food takes out all of the good things that are anti inflammatory
32:14
that will help your body digest. So diets have changed significantly. Screen times
32:20
are changing sleep patterns significantly because people are watching or looking at their phones right
32:24
before bed, right when they wake up. All that blue light is changing
32:28
sleep patterns. I know. It seems like half of my patients, my
32:31
young patients, are up till three in the morning on their phone, and
32:36
it is so hard to change that. And parents just feel hopeless when trying
32:40
to change that because their kids they just do it no matter what, and
32:45
they're on YouTube, they're talking to their friends, and they're not getting good
32:47
sleep. So our lifestyles have changed so much over these past couple of years,
32:52
so that we're losing those positive lifestyle changes. Our diets are worse.
32:57
We're not getting as much exercise, we're not getting as much sleep. There's
33:00
more stress than ever, So it makes sense that our mental health is getting
33:02
worse. And one of The last things I will mention in terms of what's
33:06
contributing to the mental health crisis is loneliness. It was definitely made much worse
33:09
over COVID, Like, yes, we found new ways to connect, whether
33:14
it's FaceTime, whether it's video calls, whether it's zoom happy Hour, whatever
33:17
it was that we were trying to do, Like, yeah, we could
33:21
do that, but it's just not the same as like being there with people
33:23
physically. Studies have shown that loneliness can lead to psychiatric disorders like depression,
33:29
alcohol abuse, child abuse, sleep problems, personality disorders, and Alzheimer's disease.
33:35
It also leads to various physical disorders like diabetes, autoimmune disorders like rhubatoid
33:39
arthritis, lupus, and cardiovascular diseases like coronary heart disease, hypertension, obesity,
33:46
physiological aging, cancer, poor hearing, and then poor health. Loneliness
33:52
is definitely a problem in America. I feel like I saw an article recently
33:55
like people just have less friends, less connections overall, and that's really hard.
34:00
I think of like my time in like college or like even after college,
34:04
of like having all these connections, but I didn't have like a three
34:07
year time period where like those connections just weren't like they weren't prioritized as much
34:12
because they couldn't be. It wasn't so much of a priority to make friends
34:15
with people in your dorm because there was no dorm to make friends with.
34:19
You were at home, like you were going to a college or university online
34:22
like it's it's a significant issue that I think again, is one of those
34:27
things that has been sped up because of the pandemic. There's an MPR survey
34:30
that showed that three out of five Americans said that they were lonely even before
34:35
the pandemic. Wouldn't be surprised if the number creeped up a little bit.
34:38
And ultimately, our society and culture, I guess that the US culture is
34:43
individualistic, like it it is. It seems to be one example I think
34:46
of of like individualism and our culture is growing up watching those like sitcoms like
34:52
on ABC Family or like Disney whatever it was. There's always the trope of
34:59
like once you turn eighteen, like you're leaving the house, You're moving out
35:01
of the house, like you're on your own type thing. And I thought
35:05
that was like for everybody, So I remember feeling worried that when I turned
35:08
eighteen, like my bags were packed, my friends are kicking me. Yeah,
35:14
I thought it was so ingrained, Like I thought that was it.
35:16
Like I obviously I didn't look like any of the people on the TV,
35:20
like Zach Morris from Saved by the Belt looks nothing like me. Maybe Ac
35:24
Slater me and him are similar, But like I thought, I thought that
35:28
was it. Man, Like I'm like them, I'm getting kicked out as
35:30
soon as I turned eighteen. But I think that just kind of goes to
35:31
show like where the overall culture of the US is. It's like this idea
35:37
of like, we'll take care of you to your eighteen, then you're on
35:39
your own. So that kind of gets people ready to like, well,
35:43
I'm gonna need to be on my own one I'm eighteen. I just gotta
35:45
take care of myself type thing. You look at other countries throughout the world,
35:47
and there are other countries that value family bonds social connectedness a lot more
35:52
than us as Americans, and having that social support can be really important for
35:59
dealing with stre and mental health. And I know I did kind of gloss
36:02
over the end of the politics thing there and we only really bring it up
36:06
because it is impacting people's mental health, and the numbers and the surveys show
36:12
us that, and so we try not to be too political, but we
36:14
do want to say that we got to start figuring this stuff out a little
36:16
bit more. We got to give it some attention that we can start making
36:21
it better. I also like ask myself, like, do politics seem to
36:23
be way more like attacking on people or hostile now? Or is it because
36:30
I'm more aware of what's going on? Which one? Is it chicken or
36:34
the egg? I don't know. And then Sarah Silverman, when she hosted
36:37
The Daily Show a couple of months ago, she had a really good piece
36:42
that talked about how social media is designed to only give airtime to the most
36:50
radical, the most extreme, the most hateful, and so our perception of
36:55
what's going on is skewed. It's biased. It's only seeing the very extreme.
37:00
That there's still a lot of people in the middle, but their voices
37:04
aren't the ones we see. The words that they say aren't the ones that
37:07
we see. So I think, deep down we got a lot more in
37:10
common than you would think, but unfortunately we're being sold this culture war.
37:17
I also know on the loneliness topic, I've had some patients who, if
37:22
they're single and they're wanting to start to get into a relationship connect with other
37:29
people, they feel like these days their only options are online dating, Like
37:35
they don't no one really knows how to date in person and find people anymore,
37:40
And we've let the cathech companies kind of anopolize how we connect with each
37:45
other romantically. And some of these people will try a couple of different websites,
37:51
have a couple of bad experiences, and then just get really sour on
37:53
it. So I think their only option is online dating, and then it
37:57
doesn't really work, and so they think, well, maybe I'm just going
37:59
to be lonely forever. And that's really demoralizing too. I wouldn't be surprised
38:05
if, like one of the trends we notice in years to come is just
38:07
less and less paying off, less and less relationships and the generation under us.
38:14
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder. All right, Jessin, I
38:16
don't want to say this is your favorite time of the show, but I
38:20
know you enjoy it, So start us off strong. Celebrities who have struggled
38:24
during the pandemic. This is according to US magazine number one. Mister Sean
38:30
Mendez, the young pop star former boyfriend of Camilicabayo. Are they still together?
38:36
Do you know you're asking the wrong He had a good quote that said
38:44
when he was speaking about the pandemic, this is a hard time for everyone,
38:46
and you deserve patients from yourself. My emotions have been all over the
38:52
place. Some days I'm okay, and others it's scary. Acknowledging the feelings
38:57
out loud helps me process them and move forward. I'm trying to be kind
39:00
and compassionate to myself. I thought that was well stated where it was he's
39:07
trying to process the things that have happened to him and process the pandemic,
39:13
process the loneliness. It seems like the default for most Americans that I speak
39:17
to is they just try and ignore their trauma and keep moving forward. And
39:22
so it is so important to address it if you really want to move forward.
39:28
Next up is Hunter Shaffer from Euphoria. I would just say quick shout
39:31
out to a Euphoria. It's a really good show Zendea. It's not given
39:36
anything away, but her portrayal of a high schooler who's struggling with substance use.
39:40
I think it is like really good. It's awesome. You haven't seen
39:43
it yet. Yeah, euphoria is great to anybody listening. But Hunter said
39:46
in US magazine, I have to be honest, I was not doing super
39:51
well mentally during the pandemic, you know, as quarantine has put a lot
39:54
of us in that place. I had taken it upon myself to research mental
39:58
hospitals in North carol I was like it might be a good decision. So
40:01
getting to the point where she felt like she needed to get a higher level
40:06
of care in the middle of the pandemic, Like, that's got to be
40:08
a pretty scary thought to feel like you're at that place. Yeah. And
40:13
our last celebrity is Miss Taraji p Henson, who is the actor from the
40:17
show Empire, and her quote is as Black people were conditioned to push through
40:23
and be strong and pray our problems away, and after a while that wasn't
40:29
working. So I found it harder for me to get out of the dark
40:31
places because I had been pushing so much, and I'm pushing through my trauma
40:37
instead of unpacking it and healing it. Enough was enough. Love That quote
40:42
exactly what I was talking about. With Shawn Mendez, like, you have
40:45
to address it, you have to unpack it, you have to talk about
40:49
it, you have to try and see how it's impacting your day to day
40:52
life and become mindful of it. Well we can do to help support those
40:57
people as much as possible that maybe don't have as many resources. Is like,
41:00
the more we try to normalize that we're still coming out of this and
41:02
it's going to take a long time. The more that we can normalize that
41:06
it's going to take a long time to heal, the more that we can
41:07
understand and acknowledge that this is going to take a long time, I think,
41:10
the easier we can make it for everybody, you know, not just
41:14
the people that have additional resources, are able to get connected to the things
41:19
quicker than most people can. Yeah, what do we do about it?
41:22
You know, we got a couple of recommendations. If you're struggling with mental
41:27
health during this time, we hope you understand that in a way, it's
41:30
normal. A lot of people are really struggling with this right now. So
41:36
if you're struggling, please go seek help from a therapist, from your doctor,
41:39
from a PCP, and maybe even make an effort to connect to people
41:45
more. If you're struggling with drugger alcohol use and feel like it is harming
41:49
you or getting in the way of your life again, please go get help
41:52
in whatever way you have possible to you, whether it's county resources, whether
41:55
it's national hotlines, whatever it is that you can to get help, whether
41:59
it's just telling somebody. Sometimes the first step is telling somebody, and that
42:01
can go a long way. Also, wanting to be intentional about healing from
42:06
the trauma of the pandemic, acknowledging that it was trauma, it is still
42:08
trauma, it's still something we're dealing with. And also just being mindful of
42:13
how the pandemic has impacted you. If you need to heal, try to
42:16
make it a priority. Try to make it something that you focus on when
42:20
you can focus on it. I like it, Eddie. What's your take
42:22
home point from today? Grace and patience, giving yourself grace, having some
42:27
patience, knowing that it's going to take some time to get back to whatever
42:31
we consider to be normal. What do you got from me? I would
42:36
say our response to the pandemic has been suboptimal, over relying on that joke
42:45
there, but Yeah. The point I want to make is that we haven't
42:50
responded well to the pandemic. It showed us that we were not ready for
42:54
that on a physical and just pandemic virus standpoint, but also on a mental
43:00
and psychological standpoint either. The world wasn't ready to handle something like that,
43:07
and so I hope we learn from it, and I hope that we get
43:09
better at it, which is a tall order, I know. Thank you
43:14
all for listening, Thank you all for the continued support. You can find
43:17
this episode and the rest of your episodes. You've already found it if you're
43:21
listening to it, but if you need to give it to a friend or
43:24
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43:28
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On Spotify, you can also leave us a five star review. On social
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media, you can find us on the TikTok, the Twitter, the Instagram,
43:43
the YouTube at Millennial MHC. Thank you all for listening, and maybe
43:46
even more so than any other episode, because we are in the middle of
43:50
a mental health crisis. Take care of you'all mentals, and have a good eye