Although we are still far from turning the page of covid-19, almost five months after the first case was registered in Colombia, the waters begin to settle on some fronts and reveal other challenges that the country will have to face, derived from the pandemic and the measures taken to confront it.
This is the case of mental health, a field in which the outlook before the crisis was already disturbing. According to the 2019 national survey, 10 out of 100 adults and 12 out of 10 adolescents needed some type of care. In fact, Colombia is one of the countries with the highest loss of healthy years due to mental disorders. Fifty-nine percent of the years of life lost due to disability are due to non-communicable diseases, and of that figure, 19 percent correspond to mental disorders of some kind. 35.4 percent of the years of life lost due to disability in the country correspond to mental disorders. To this worrisome picture it must be added that only one in ten patients receives adequate care. Many factors come together to produce such alarming figures. But there is one especially critical: mental illness remains taboo. Unfortunately, having a mental disorder is still a stigma. Not only at the social level, but also at work and family. Those who have been diagnosed with one of these diseases, according to the popular imagination, have no way to function in society. And nothing more wrong.
And that’s how things were until confinement. The confinement, predictably, made things worse. A study by the Javeriana University disclosed last week revealed that 68.1 of the adolescents who took part had some level of depression, and of them, 17 percent had severe symptoms. It was also found that 53.4 of the total had different levels of anxiety. Scary.
There is more: half of those surveyed said that the confinement had greatly affected their lives. 39 percent, that the restrictions by all lived prevented them from performing in basic activities. And nearly a third said their problems had definitely been compounded by the lack of social contact. Likewise, one in three expressed that it affects them to a great extent that someone in their home has stopped working. One in five manifests anguish derived from difficulties in acquiring basic foods.
We can add what was revealed by an article published in the scientific journal ‘Brain, Behavior, and Immunity’: of 402 adults who survived COVID-19, 265 presented mental alterations that exceeded the mean defined for these cases. Forty percent have experienced severe anxiety symptoms; another 40 percent, insomnia; 28 percent, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Quarantines have been important to control the figures, it is true, but it is also true that their impact in this area forces us to deploy comprehensive care right away
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The outlook is more than worrying. It is clear that the experience of confinement radically tests people’s mental health. There are many factors: the feeling of constant danger, abrupt and drastic changes in habits and routines, the impossibility of healthy interaction with the environment, job instability, the vulnerability that is experienced when showing the deficiencies of the health system. To this is added how the decrease or total absence of physical activity directly impacts the quality of sleep, not to mention eating disorders that also incubate or worsen when they already existed.
What to do then? Last year, the Ministry of Health had already defined this problem as a priority, drawing up a comprehensive policy with a Conpes document, but the initiative was relegated in March for obvious reasons. For now, the ministerial entity has decided to guarantee the continuity of care for those who already came with a real or latent diagnosis of emotional disturbances. Regulatory mechanisms have been provided to facilitate such attention, virtual or face-to-face. Support channels were also available, specific telephone lines at the departmental level. But it’s not enough.
Such a long quarantine has uncertain effects. Some with unpredictable consequences for the future. The confinements have been important to control the figures, it is true, but it is also true that their impact on mental health requires the deployment of comprehensive care, within a preventive context. It is time to understand that your care is as important as your physical health. And it is also time to face taboos, to stop stigmatizing and to understand that facing this reality with a sincere, humble and open attitude of society will undoubtedly help it not turn into something similar to another pandemic.
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