Express & Star comment: Mental health must not be forgotten

And at least another three weeks of your sentence to go. It’s enough to drive you stir crazy. For most people, the focus during the current crisis is understandably on staying physically healthy and caring for loved ones.

Staying home, the experts have assured us, is the best way to stay safe and avoid becoming one of the coronavirus victims, and also avoid the danger of spreading infection. Staying home may be the most healthy environment in that sense, but there is also the hidden side of health – mental health.

Some will be worried about their jobs, about home schooling, about any number of issues that may well be exacerbated by our lockdown rules.

Without being able to get out, apart from the allowed limited daily exercise, and without being able to meet others, socialise, and perhaps talk things over, being confined to the house brings its own problems for those who were already dealing with a range of mental health issues.

Then there’s the potential of a pressure cooker atmosphere building up through being with the same people all the time. Others will be alone, and finding that isolation hard to take.

There are going to be as many different household situations as there are households, ranging from those who have a relaxed attitude to the lockdown, to those for whom it is piling stress upon stress. When the crisis is over we shall all look back and ponder on the lessons we have learned, and reflect on things that might have been done differently. Today the reality, tomorrow the hindsight.

The effect on mental health will be one of those things which will be considered. New hospitals have been built in days to help the NHS cope with the outbreak. What has been done to cope with the mental health challenges? Happily, there are people here to help as people face their worries and struggles, like the Samaritans, who are on hand both in the health “peace” and the present health “war.”

Seeking such support is important. We don’t talk about mental health enough at the best of times.