Quarantine, Loss, & Mental Health: Naming the Invisible Dimensions of the Pandemic
Meeting and listening to people as a chaplain in the psychiatric institute has caused me to reflect on how our mental and emotional health and well-being is dependent on a matrix of factors, most (if not all) of which have been taken away by the pandemic. People continue to lose their community of friends and family, sources of economic stability, outlets for creative expression, recreative spaces for movement & activity, and so much more. While staying under quarantine is absolutely important for keeping COVID cases low and ICU’s under control, what is absent from this conversation and seemingly invisible are people’s internal experiences of suffering, loss, grief, and isolation.
Speaking from my own experience, I feel privileged in that working at a hospital restores a semblance of a normal routine of going into work, and my vocation of chaplain requires that I talk to patients and staff all day. But as the Bay Area counties transitioned into March-level lock downs due to rising cases, I also felt a similar sense of loss and shock rise in me.
When I quarantined for two weeks in early December because of an accidental COVID exposure at work, I needed to work from home even though I tested negative. In those two weeks of working from home, I lost the opportunity to be with my co-workers and patients on my birthday and the ability to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and hospital-wide event I’d been helping plan. On the third day, I had an emotional break down from a sense of losing my in-person community and interactions, and my limited rhythm of life.
The stories I hear from patients who find themselves in the psychiatric institute all share common themes. When the mandated lock down started, many immersed themselves in their work. They reached out to friends for virtual happy hours, stayed connected via calls and social media, and even picked up some fun hobbies and self-care practices. As some of us know, even these practices are limited in how much they actually address our deep pain and loss. Then, patients share how alcohol, intrusive thoughts, and attempts for self-harm felt like their last remaining options.
At the same time, keeping COVID cases low in the Bay Area is an absolute necessity as ICU capacity levels are terrifyingly dwindling. The geriatric floor I serve is now unable to care for elderly patients and has transformed into a triage floor for COVID patients to offset the pressure on the ICU’s. Nurses I speak to are physically drained, teary, and face the realities of death and loss around the clock.
What I don’t want to communicate is that COVID-related illnesses should be minimized for the sake of mental-health illnesses and crises. We also cannot ignore that staying in prolonged quarantine and following COVID guide lines are presenting serious issues that are also detrimental to people’s health and well-being.
COVID is dangerous and experiencing abrupt loss of community and important factors of life can incur other forms of illnesses that can’t be treated in ICU’s. I want to say this is perhaps a crossroads that is both wrought with problems and doesn’t have a clear answer. Sitting in its complexities and frustrations is something I’m learning to do alongside my patients.
What I have found helpful for myself and others is that creating space (through shared presence and conversation) for naming and grieving loss and suffering through stories makes the pain and weight a bit more bearable.
“This is awful.”
“That experience sounds painful.”
“I’ve felt a similar grief before as well.”
Life cannot continue in the same way before quarantine, and maybe acknowledging that is a good starting place. And maybe what we’re left with is that in safer times, we will hold each other tighter and closer.
