Two Years Since Covid First Locked Down Our Lives
By Janet Bangura
The UK has officially marked 2 years, since the beginning the first national lockdown. It almost feels like it was just yesterday, that we were all told to stay at home and only go out to buy essentials.
Events are being held across the UK to celebrate the second anniversary of the national lockdown that we all faced together! A memorial concert is taking place for those who died during lockdown, as a result of Covid-19, at St Paul’s Cathedral in central London. People who won’t be able to attend have been encouraged to shine a light or display flowers in their windows.
As a result of Covid-19, over 100K people have died and nearly half a million people were hospitalized, and the economy significantly shrunk. All of this had impact on the mental health of the nation but through the midst’s of things, the effect of it wasn’t highlighted enough and this caused people to just suffer in silence!
Covid-19 and the nation’s mental health confirms that 10 million people (8.5 million adults and 1.5 million children and young people) in England will need still support with their mental health as a direct result of the pandemic over the next three to five years.
Coventry’s new Director of Public Health Dr Allison Duggal has said “The pandemic has affected people in different ways, but I feel there is a particular issue around mental health that needs to be addressed.”
However, the results of this have yet to be seen in the Coventry University Health & Welfare
department. A member of the team told CovFeed, “I haven’t exactly seen a difference with the amount of people who’ve contacted our welfare team during Covid, and now.”
One in six children are more likely to suffer from mental health problems according to the children’s society, young people and children of all school ages, were one of the most affected and were left suffering in the awake of the pandemic. This was influenced through schools and other educational facilities being closed, due to the roaring cases of the Covid-19.
After schools closed due to COVID-19 and ways of accessing GPs changed, new referrals to CYPMHS fell sharply (by 35% in April 2020 compared with the year before). However, about a year later, these reached a new high of 100,000 per month.
