Do you find yourself eating more, or less than usual? Or openly expressing irrational anger on social media or against family members? Or being irritable at the slightest provocation? Or finding it hard to sleep, or can help over-sleeping? If you are experiencing any of those, chances are, you are under stress in this time of the coronavirus.
Mental health advocates here and some counterparts in other parts of the world are trying to understand why people are under stress at this time of the pandemic, and what can be done to manage it.
Michele Joan Valbuena, a psychology professor at Silliman University here, said a pandemic like this will cause a number of emotional experiences, and people will need assistance to make sense of them.
Her fellow mental health advocates Jake Macahig, Rogen Alcantara, Chizanne Sarabia-Larena, Lourdes Angela Florendo-Piñero, and Rev. Al Fuertes in Fairfax, Virginia in the US, were starting to get concerned as well; until a priest challenged them how they could “address people’s mental health needs”.
Valbuena said such emotional experiences in this time of CoViD are all-too-common. She noted how “people are feeling afraid, angry, uncertain, anxious, and confused. We feel grief, in general,” Valbuena said.
Our group agreed we needed to move right away because people were getting angry, confused, feeling uncertain, and afraid,” Valbuena recalled.
So she consulted her colleagues at Silliman for any impediments if they took the initiative; Macahig created a Facebook page called Your Mental Health amid Corona Virus; Alcantara, who is chair of the Psychology department at Silliman, gathered online guidance counselors and those have been trained in psycho-social processing; while Larena gathered the psychology practitioners and guidance counselors at the Negros Oriental State University where she is chair of the Psychology department.
While close to 5,000 patients all over the country are currently fighting for their physical health due to infection from the coronavirus, hundreds of thousands more who are complying with the government-mandated social distancing are battling with mental health issues — and will also need support.
“People’s mental health is very important in creating and establishing a sense of balance or equanimity in situations like this,” said Reverend Fuertes, main facilitator of the Zoom sessions. “It’s what enables a person to still find meaning in the midst of the pandemic. And hopefully, it continues to fuel that drive and persistence to live or survive, or do something about it,” said Fuertes, an expert in psychosocial trauma healing based at George Mason University in Virginia.
Because of the need for social distancing, this group of volunteers never met physically. “We met virtually using Zoom,” a free video conferencing tool that is also downloadable on smartphones. They were fired up with one objective: to “give people spaces to talk about their pandemic experiences”.
“This was going to be our first attempt to give mental health assistance and psycho-social support through a purely virtual platform to help the community cope,” said Valbuena.
This same group of friends/mental health advocates was dispatched by Silliman to Tagbilaran in 2013 to provide trauma awareness and resiliency sessions to the 7.2 earthquake victims there. Then they were sent to Tacloban in 2014 after supertyphoon Yolanda; then to Marawi in 2017 after the armed conflict.
But Valbuena said this pandemic is different. She noted that the government-mandated quarantine is making people “revisit personal issues that have long been in us, maybe ignored or non-resolved or suppressed or postponed” in terms of confronting them. “They will most likely resurface at this time. That’s why all the more, people need help in a crisis like this to maintain mental health fitness,” she said.
She added that limiting people’s normal movement without much preparation can lead to a depressive disorder, loneliness, or self-harm/suicidal behavior.
Piñero explained that some reactions to stress may manifest physically such as allergies or CoViD-like symptoms like cough and fever.
Other physical reactions include migraine, digestive problems, palpitations, back pain, panic attacks.
“If we do not manage that stress, our body will just falter, and we don’t want that to happen especially at this time,” she warned.
“We are afraid to be infected with a virus for which there is no cure. We are afraid that this might get worse, and not really end well. We are afraid that we could lose our jobs, and run out of money. We are afraid that we would go hungry,” lamented Valbuena.
What can we do to help ourselves? “People should look for ways or things to do that make them feel good, or which give them joy. And it is important to talk to someone — a friend, family member, or a mental health advocate,” Valbuena pointed out.
For virtual support group sessions, those interested can send their full name and email address so they can be invited to a session schedule via Zoom. Each online session is limited to about five participants to allow them ample time to express. It could last for about two to three hours each week. The volunteers also do one-on-one consultations.
The participants coming from Manila and other parts of the Philippines would talk about their particular situations.
“We want to emphasize these sessions are not for counselling or therapy. We are primarily offering spaces for people to talk about their pandemic experiences,” Valbuena clarified.
“The approach is not for problem-solving but it’s more of taking care of the mind by talking about their experience,” explained Piñero. “Sometimes we just say ‘We can do this!’; then we find ourselves getting angry so easily, or crying suddenly for no apparent reason.” She said these are feelings we cannot simply brush off.
The recurring themes of the conversations the past week: confusion, fear, anxiety. “Then we would help them understand that it is actually grief they are feeling” over the concept of quarantine and not understanding as much about the pandemic. “Some of them just break down and cry,” Valbuena noted.
After each session, the volunteers send feedback sheets to fill out. “That way, it gives us an idea about how the participants have been helped through this online medium,” Valbuena said.
She said that so far, most participants expressed it was good to be able to pour out their feelings and express themselves. “Many of them said they were able to talk to someone, listen to others and learn from them, feel being supported, and realize that no one is alone in this experience.”
She noted that being in quarantine is also turning out to be positive. Some people started doing physical exercises at home. Others deactivated their social media accounts and returned to reading books. Still others went out of their way to volunteer in community efforts.
”We now see people coming together, helping each other make personal protective equipment for the frontliners, donating food, overtly expressing appreciation to farmers, vendors, security guards, utility persons, salespersons at the supermarkets,” noting these are things we took for granted until this crisis hit us. “There is a greater illustration of altruism by so many people.”
She said more people are also just now realizing how nurses are “paid unfairly” for the work that they had been doing even before the crisis. “So we now realize how doubly overworked they are now.”
Valbuena also warned that the proliferation of fake news on the coronavirus could make people more worried. “It’s a major problem this time, especially that people have more time on the internet,” she said. She added that an overconsumption of ‘news’ — “especially unverified information and stories on the ineptness of government” — could aggravate people’s anxiety levels.
What’s in it for the mental health advocates? Why even bother? “This is purely volunteerism. We don’t get any compensation in cash or kind. This is our way of helping our community given our capacities,” Valbuena said, who has been a mental health advocate the past 20 years.
“We hope the collaboration and teamwork we see from people now can be sustained long after we overcome the crisis. This experience tells us we can work together, and do things out of pure volunteerism spirit, without thinking of anything in return,” she said.
“As an activist for people’s well-being, and with my experiences in my practice, I know that a pandemic like this has a huge toll on our psyche. And because I have the expertise, I should use it to help people,” she said.
“Being able to help is also for my own well-being and sanity,” she quickly added.
Similarly for Piñero, mental health advocates reaching out to help others is like an “automatic response”. “We cannot not do anything, so in a sense, it may also be my way of coping with the crisis, by converting my energy into positive action to help others.”
Valbuena urged anyone interested in making PPEs or giving mental health assistance to volunteer with the Facebook page Your Mental Health amid Corona Virus. “We welcome them because this is also our way of coping. It is part of our resiliency which is essential in our survival in a crisis.”
She said: “And now that I have a child, I want to do my part in making the world a better place for him, and I want him to grow up knowing that helping and volunteering is important, and being able to share our talents is essential for a healthy community relationship. (Irma Faith Pal)