Early date for 2020 shows that - despite worries to the contrary - suicide rates actually fell. As Josh Marshall explains, suicide rates fall during wartime, and the pandemic was basically like wartime. Suicide has a lot of causes, but one is clearly emotional isolation. The pandemic brought us together as it physically separated us into six foot squares. The shared experience of dealing with the pandemic has been overshadowed by a few videos of anti-maskers yelling at cashiers. This is one of the way social media amplifies belligerent outliers. Most people have put their shoulder to the common wheel and pushed.
If we are talking about a healthy society - mentally as well as physically - we have to address the increasing isolation that too often accompanies modern life. I was depressed most of the time I spent in Los Angeles and only stopped being routinely and clinically depressed when I started teaching. Some of that was being busy, but it was also being part of a community.
Connections are everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment