On Loss, Personal and Collective

Written May 7, 2020

Separation 

by W.S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me 

Like thread through a needle. 

Everything I do is stitched with its color. 

Let me preface this post: I won't pretend to be a mental health expert. I'm merely speaking as someone who spends a great deal of time observing the world and has had direct personal experience with both loss and mental illness. 

On March 12th of last year, just around 1 AM, my mother in law's courageous 20+ year-long battle with breast cancer ended. I was 8.5 months pregnant with my youngest son, the grandchild she first asked me about on my wedding day. The baby we were anxiously awaiting after 3 miscarriages in a row. For two years straight, my personal life was tinged with death. When Griffin arrived on March 30th of last year, my husband and I were still deeply mourning the loss of Mom, but we finally felt there was something to look forward to after so much sadness. Fast forward to this March. We were planning a celebration of Griffin's first birthday - the first time we'd see many of our large extended family since Mom's funeral. The pandemic threw a monkey wrench in those plans.

The scale of collective loss is something we haven't experienced in my lifetime. Over 70,000 Americans dead in a month, over 8000 in New Jersey alone. We've been fortunate thus far. No one we love has died. We still have enough income to pay our mortgage and food bills - I can work from home, though my husband has to go to work where he is risking exposure to the virus weekly. So far we are healthy. I know that not everyone has been so lucky. My heart breaks a little more with each death I read about and each family thrown into chaos by loss. I also worry for the small business owners like my father and employees who have been let go and can't find work or get enough unemployment to pay bills like my eldest son. It's easy to get sucked into a spiral of anxiety and depression.

Full Poem Source: Jay Hulme

I've heard several people say "The cure can't be worse than the disease", as though repealing shelter in place orders will fix what is ailing us. I've heard people claim that more people will die due to alcohol and drug addictions or suicide because of the shelter in place than will die because of the virus. As a person who has dealt with suicidal ideations since childhood, I reject both of these statements.

Hardship is not worse than death. Hardship is temporary, death is permanent. Suicide doesn't end pain; it simply transfers it.

Source: VailDaily

I'm not naive. There certainly will be people who die from addiction and suicide because the pandemic has impacted their mental health - the 1918 pandemic taught us that. Some tragic stories like that of Dr. Lorna Breen have already been reported. However, we now have tools to help people cope with their demons. We can be proactive to minimize risk. 

Need a lifeline? Call 1 800 273 8255.

So what do the mental health experts say we should do? A consortium of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals developed a short position paper about the steps we can take.

Lancet: Strategies for Mitigating Suicide Risk

They recommend that we implement universal interventions that will support individuals not previously known to have mental health challenges at the same time we are applying specific, selective interventions for people known to be facing a crisis. The general interventions recommended...

1. Government provided safety nets to help deal with pandemic related financial stressors
2. Government provided support for individuals needing to escape domestic violence
3. Public health education about alcohol consumption 
4. Find creative ways for community members to remain engaged with each other when person to person contact is not possible
5. Monitoring access to means and reporting suspicious behavior
6. Reinforce guidelines on responsible media reporting, in order to not encourage suicidal behavior

I understand the desire to return to "normal". But right now, that's not possible. I understand grieving for what we've lost and what we are missing. Now is the time to think outside the box, to figure out new ways of doing the business of being human, in order to keep as many people healthy as possible. If we take away nothing else from this global crisis, it should be that people need other people (even if that means keeping apart) and that both individuals and society as a whole are better when we work together. So let's be careful out there...