Covid-19 and Mental Change: to be or not to be!

In the early days of the Covid-19 caused pandemic, when our agenda completely changed and we, on the other hand, were trying to hold on to our own internal environment, the psychological pressure and uncertainty caused by the pandemic came on and it continues.

Most questions on everyone's mind: "Will our lives be the same again?", "When will this situation end?", "What if I got the virus?", Tons of questions like…."What if something happens to my loved ones?" The unconscious answers to these types of questions, to which we want to find answers about our lives, but whose answers are uncertain, have been psychological regression, that is, they are more unhappy, more hopeless and pessimistic, sometimes more suspicious and fearful and even more fearful. 

The Covid-19 pandemic, with the initial panic and partly still, brought us back to physiological needs, the most fundamental step in the Maslow hierarchy of needs. When the first bans began, we saw people wildly empty food shelves. In the early stages, of course, these are natural reactions to the "stressor". On the one hand, the struggle for existence, on the other hand with the intensive hygiene that invaded our lives, interesting changes were also experienced in psychiatry! While patients diagnosed with "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" in the past relaxed somewhat, functional patients with paranoid (suspicious) elements also relaxed somewhat. Because everyone is more obsessed, everyone is more hygienic, everyone is more skeptical now ... “What if my test result was wrong? What if I encounter a carrier? Keep the shopping bags in the sun... Together we will see the changing norms of psychiatry more clearly in the years to come.

Aside from the obvious aspect of work, the increasingly intense "feeling of longing" for our ordinary life has sometimes become a question of life or not, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To be or not to be, that is the problem.

Is it a nobler act to endure the blows and evils of cruel fate?

Or is it to rebel and fight the sea of problems? Die, sleep...

That's all; We will end our heartache and thousands of pains inherited to mankind...

This is what is sincerely desired.

In the lines above I have tried to make determinations about the new psychological normals caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the course of mental illness and the search for the meaning of man. Take the case of the "Mourning process" caused by this change that has been in our lives for more than a year and the "search for meaning" in this change process.

When we consider whether or not Covid-19 will enter our lives, we are faced with a human life that is being turned upside down. In hindsight, loss has always been a part of human life, and responses to loss determine behavior as well. Let's take a look at the stages of this condition, which we refer to as the "Mourning process" in psychiatry, in terms of the change in time:

At first we said - just conspiracy theory - and human history began with the "denial" process.  Then we all said, with the information from the hospitals - it may be, but it's an exaggeration. This was the" split phase "of the mourning process. Especially during the summer season we experienced the division phase with all its vitality. After a while, even shopping and sitting in a cafe became a risk factor in our everyday lives. With the element of danger we began to develop fear responses. These worries were the effects of changing social rules and daily life. As with any change, anger begins to show itself. In particular, health workers attempting to provide information in polyclinics have been more likely to get their share of this anger from "poor parenting". Anger sometimes manifested itself in family conflicts. Because the family members and children who were always scattered in daily life were now at home. As home life continued online, the anger accumulated through media/ social media that was cause for concern was directed at someone at home.

We actually lived like an ostrich with our heads buried, but lifting our heads and living consciously is the difference. Unfortunately, every knowledge comes with a loss. It's kind of a "King Naked" story. We forgot to produce while living comfortably. We humans understand how important it is to produce. None of us are in a comfortable virtual environment anymore.

Psychologically we are in the next phase. We are in the "depressive phase" in which we realize that we are destroying nature, other creatures, water, everything except humans and humans. This is not the first time. People went through many: the plague outbreak in the 1350s or the smallpox epidemics, which got worse at certain times, and the Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people between 1918 and 1920.

"IT'S TIME TO MELT THE PALACES OFF THE ICE!"

Indeed, there have always been epidemics in our lives, but we have always denied them in our endless troubles. Now is the time for depression! While people were idolizing themselves - at the expense of nature's destruction - they found that it was indeed a small link in the chain.

There is still hope! We can be reborn from the depressive phase by properly questioning our existence.Now we have to digest the fact that "life is not man, but man is a part of life." It's not time to live in ice palaces as a prince / princess, it's time to melt ice palaces! As we turn our direction to this side, your eyes will begin to see the beautiful lights of nature ascending.