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Isolation and Inebriation: Covid-19’s Growing Toll on Mental Health
Experts are increasingly worried about the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on mental health. Not only is it intensifying stress around the future of families, jobs, and personal well-being; it’s also exacerbating the existing negative mental health impacts of modern life. “The more modern we are, the less connected we are to others and more reliant on devices,” writes psychiatrist Mark D. Rego, MD, in Elemental, expressing concern that the pandemic has left us more alone and “trapped in our own minds” than ever before.
Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic in mid-March, alcohol sales in the U.S. skyrocketed. As Markham Reid put it in Elemental at the time, “Hard times call for hard drinks.” While it became common to partake in Zoom happy hours and after-work drinks at home, experts began to worry about the impact of all that alcohol. The U.S. already had a serious drinking problem, writes Robert Roy Britt in Elemental, and the Covid-19 crisis — with its triple whammy of stress, isolation, and boredom — is only making it worse.
