With one unending crisis after another, is America unknowingly in a mental meltdown?
Lifestyle :
The world is a crazy place these days and Americans are beginning to feel their lives destabilized by the stress of the times. Our routines have been displaced and our happiness has been dampened. Now, experts are wondering just how much damage has been done to our psyches and our mental health.
We’re all tired of COVID — but with the virus continuing to mutate and new variants appearing almost every other week (and reinfections rising), COVID keeps proving that it’s not tired of us. Monkeypox now appears to be running rampant in Austin, TX, and is a legitimate candidate to become the next big national (if not global) pandemic sooner than we think. Gas prices remain at an all-time high. The US is on the brink of an economic recession. Mass shootings are happening far too frequently and substantial gun control remains profoundly out of reach. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and hate crimes are all on the rise. Women have lost control over their own bodies after the cancellation of Roe v. Wade. The politically conservative US Supreme Court has blatantly made it known that after illegalizing abortion, it will attack marriage equality and same-sex relationships next. The January 6th congressional hearings have revealed just how unbelievably close America came to a political coup and losing its democracy. Republicans are poised to win the 2022 midterms and force their conservative morality on the country. Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are ramping up to kidnap the US election process and assure that free and fair American elections are a relic of the past.
To say that Americans are stressed and in crisis mode would be an understatement.
“For two and a half years, it has felt like – it’s just one more thing after another,” said psychologist Vaile Wright, senior director of the Office of Health Care Innovation at the American Psychological Association. “We are not meant to live under this degree of fight or flight.”
“The country has been through tumultuous times before and come out intact. But now, it all seems to be happening at once,” said communications and crisis management consultant Tony Fratto.
“It’s crazy. I want to believe that it’s not quite as bad, but everything seems to be happening on an aggravated scale,” Fratto continued. “Watergate was a traumatic event in American history, but the January 6th insurrection makes it look like a high school prank.”
With crisis after crisis taking an unknown toll on Americans, many don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Even short-term things don’t feel short when you’re in the middle of them,” said Amy Fried, a political science professor at the University of Maine. “There’s a sense that things have just sort of spiraled. And adding to the anxiety is a reduced faith in government to find solutions.”
What will America look like once we’re on the other end of these crazy times? Further, what will Americans’ mental health be like by then, if it survives at all?
OK WASSUP! discusses Lifestyle News:
America is in crisis. Is a mental meltdown next?
“For two and a half years, it has felt like – it’s just one more thing after another,” said psychologist Vaile Wright, senior director of the Office of Health Care Innovation at the American Psychological Association. […] – DJ
I have to respectfully disagree with the psychologist Vaile Wright. It has been “one more thing after another’ since Trump rose to power and won the presidency in 2016. In other words, WE have been under relentless assault (mentally and emotionally) for at least 6 years, NOT just “two and a half years.”
THEN, you add Coved 19 (and its subvariants) to the mix over the past 2 yrs and a half and as DJ pointed out ALL of those deadly infections are still with Us – along with ALL of the other madness we’ve had to deal with!