The Planet Is On Fire and We’re Just Chilling Out: Mental Illness and the Coronavirus Crisis
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
— R.E.M.
Deaths are piling up exponentially throughout the globe. Most of the country is on lockdown. And many of us are experiencing extreme claustrophobia and high anxiety. But a cohort of mentally ill Americans are doin’ just fine.
“I find that many people with chronic anxiety or depression are faring pretty well during this pandemic,” says Dr. Eric Schieber, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist who treats patients in Chicago. “They have known mental suffering and have built a kind of resistance to it.”
My sentiments exactly. This is not a drill, but for those of us who struggle with bipolar disorderlike myself, or depression, or anxiety, this is not our first rodeo. We’re surprisingly copacetic. We’ve had emotional distress time after time, so we are more resilient than the normies a.k.a. people without mental illness. In other words, we’ve been training for this our whole lives.
ILL IMMUNIZATION
For many of us, it’s as if we have antibodies in our brains. We are immune to the mental distress that is flooding the nation and the world.
During my worst major depressive episode in 2008, I cried every day for a year, sometimes hysterically and sometimes sobbing. It was excruciating. My doctor prescribed every medication she could think of to alleviate my depression. After a year of trial and error, it was an oldie-but-goodie that hit the spot. We took a stab at Lithium, a drug that was the first one approved by the FDA to treat bipolar disorder in 1970. It worked.
That depressive episode was like a dress rehearsal for a time like today. I know how bad things can get, and I survived a serious depressive episode so it’s as if I am immune to this emergency.
SOCIALIZING FROM AFAR
I’ve been on lockdown exactly 20 days. I live in Chicago and our state’s “stay at home order” has been in effect since March 21.
I’m FaceTiming with my psychiatrist once a week. I get my groceries delivered. The only time I go outside is to go to the pharmacy or…
