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from the would-you-like-to-talk-about-it? dept.
How to keep your sanity when you feel like the world is going crazy:
Hi there. How are you feeling today?
It's a loaded question right now. Many of us are having extraordinary feelings in response to extraordinary times. Hundreds of millions of people here in the United States and around the world are doing their best to help contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 by following World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control guidelines and, bluntly, staying the heck away from other people.
Even for a born introvert like yours truly, the era of prolonged, enforced social distancing is hard. Folks are either stuck at home alone, stuck at home with their families, or still having to go out into the world every day to work—either because their work is vital or their employers are being stubborn—and all the while, we're being buffeted by government warnings and endless waves of frightening news.
In short: right now, we're all exchanging some measure of our mental health in order to preserve our own and others' physical health, and that has limits. We're all in this together, for several weeks and months, if not longer, and basically, we need to avoid driving ourselves and each other crazy if we're going to get through it.
That, of course, is easier said than done. To that end, we called up mental health experts to ask what, realistically, we should all be doing to help ourselves and others.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday March 24 2020, @02:58AM (1 child)
After the US, the UK has probably the second-worst "leadership" in a crisis situation. I was talking about countries with actual leadership. Take for example Bulgaria, a... not very functional country where things sort of work some of the time. They activated 40-year-old Warsaw Pact bioweapons attack protocols and put some Major-General with an unpronouncable name in charge of running things, with the PM stepping back and letting those trained for it run the show. Given the limited resources and other limitations due to the fact that it's, well Bulgaria, they're actively responding and getting shit sorted as best they can. Fricken' *Bulgaria* has better leadership in this crisis than the most powerful country on earth, whose Covid19 czar wants to let Covid19 carriers back out in public ("Vice President Mike Pence indicated on Sunday at a White House briefing about the virus that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would issue new guidelines on Monday, allowing some people who have been exposed to the coronavirus to resume working outside their homes if they wear masks"), and whose leader is twittering about unproven drugs that he reckons are miracle cures.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:45AM
Here in Canada, it is the various "Chief Medical Officers", regional, Provincial and Federal that are doing a lot of the leading and getting as much public facing time as the politicians, who are mostly involved with the economic part.