Has Quarantining Given the Population a Taste of Mental Illness?
By: David Israel
Tags: Mental Illness, Mental Health Awareness, Quarantine, Covid 19, Mental Health

After nearly a year living in a “COVID-19 World” where people have been asked to quarantine for the safety of the human-race, the population at large is reeling from its mental impacts.

When I say “it’s impacts” what exactly am I talking about? There have been a multitude of impacts life in a COVID-19 world has had. The main impact I am talking about here is the mental impact of living in quarantine and specifically, has that given the people of the world a taste of what it’s like to live with mental illness.

How could that be? How does being quarantined equate to living with mental illness, you ask? First answer the question: “have you or anyone you know bemoaned the fact that being quarantined is ‘not natural?’ Humans are social animals, we’re meant to be together.” In short, as humans, our instinct is to be together with other people. COVID has forced us to ignore our instincts for our own safety. That is precisely how quarantine has given us a small taste of living with, in my opinion, one of the most difficult parts of living with mental illness; not trusting our instincts.

The definition of the word instinct is “an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to a certain stimuli.” Instincts come from the primal part of our brains, meaning they have been with humans since are early ancestors and have played a crucial role in our survival. So instincts are innate, or natural, and come from our own brains. Also, trusting them has been evolutionarily productive so they have helped us survive. In short, we should trust our instincts. If we can’t trust our instincts, what can we trust?

That is something that those living with mental illness struggle with daily, in varying degrees, based on the specific illness. But the fact remains that oftentimes, we CAN’T trust our instincts, our thoughts, and in some cases, our reality. Think of how hard that must be. It’s quite literally, unnatural. I am someone with diagnosed depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Luckily, I have been in therapy since I was nine. In those 26 years, I have largely been learning to analyze my thoughts, identify the depressive/anxious/compulsive thoughts and then deal with them. What a strange and difficult thing it is to vet your own thoughts. I have to constantly confirm my thoughts and my reality to keep myself from drowning. It’s exhausting and hard, largely because it’s something I need to be actively doing at all time because thoughts and instincts come naturally so the natural reaction is to trust them. Those of us with mental illness don’t always have that luxury.

There is no doubt that living in quarantine is hard, sad, and most certainly, unnatural. It is completely normal to be upset by it and dislike it. Just keep in mind it’s temporary to live in this unnatural state. Hopefully, you won’t have to live like this much longer but maybe this experience will arm you with insight into the work your family and friends with mental illness put in and some empathy for them.