Mental Health post-COVID

This has proved a challenging time for everyone involved and is going to be a very complex situation once things get back to normal and appointments with mental health professionals start. As firstly you have the cohort of people who regularly relied upon these services for the support and help that they provide, the people with bipolar, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and many others as well.

As the lockdown has meant that their regular appointments, be them every month, two months or three months have not been happening, and that they have been essentially left on their own. Now in some cases, their community mental health team have been calling them to check up on them and to see if they are ok and how they are coping with the situation. But a telephone call cannot replace a face to face appointment, as you don’t get to see the body language of the person and how they react to the questions they act.

So when the services open up there will be a large number of these people who have to be seen by their medical professionals for the care that they need, and probably extra support because of the lockdown and being isolated in their house for several months.

We then come to a new group of people, those who have not traditionally suffered from mental health problems. But because of lockdown have been subject to stress and anxiety, over…