Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast - Covid increasing Suicidality

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have seemed to foster a "sub-epidemic" of suicidality and deteriorating mental health. Suicidal thoughts have spiked across every demographic due to the loss of connection to usual psychosocial supports, normal activities, and in a lot of cases, jobs, leading to significant financial stress. These stressors compound and massively impact the mental resiliency of everyone reached by this pandemic. Link to Blog. Link to Resource Library. 

Hi, for this special edition short episode, I was talking with Dr. Michael Cummings and we were having a discussion on neurotripiline actually. And in the middle of it, we kind of had a digression talking about suicidality in the current pandemic and this sort of sub-epidemic of suicidality that's going on. Specifically suicidal thoughts are spiking across every demographic due to the loss of connection to usual psychosocial supports, normal activities, and in a lot of cases, jobs, the loss of jobs leading to a significant financial stress. These stressors compound and massively impact the mental resiliency of everyone reached by this pandemic. The hardest hit demographic is the unpaid caregivers and essential workers.

And we'll be talking about this more in this micro episode. I hope this is something that has been helpful. Up until this point, actually, there was a systemic review that was released June 7, 2020, before the CDC report, and they found no evidence of increased suicide, self-harm, suicidal behaviors, or suicidal thoughts. And they looked at a ton of studies to get this data. So the study that came out August 14th, 2020 by the CDC, titled Mental Health Substance Use Suicidal Iodiation during the COVID-19 pandemic,

really was a first sort of big survey that looked at the increased risk of suicidality. This was a study of 5,412 adults. It was a web-based survey done by Qualtricks. So here we go. And to bring this to the current time that we're in, I don't know if you saw that recent CDC document that came out August 17th, but they talked about how the suicidal thoughts is going way up. And the percentage in this group that they looked at,

it's like a lot higher than I would have expected. What do you think? Yeah, this pandemic is putting enormous stresses on people, certainly financial stress, loss of stability, being simply confined and unable to access usual social supports, all of those things are, I think, adding up to, frankly, we're going to have a sub-epidemic, if you will, of social isolation, loneliness, depression, and suicidality related to the COVID-pand-pand-a-com. pandemic. Okay, listen to this, listen to this quote from this article. The percentage of respondents

who reported having seriously considered suicide in the 30 days before completing the survey was 10.7 percent was significantly higher among respondents age 18 to 24. That jumped up to 25 percent. Racial minorities, ethnic groups, Hispanics were 18.6 percent. Black respondents were 15.1 percent. But listen to this. Self-reported unpaid caregivers for adults was 30.7 percent, and essential workers, 21.7 percent. That seems really high to me. That seems really high. That is really high. And frankly, those are somewhat frightening. numbers, but if you think about it, unpaid caregivers and essential workers have in many ways faced the most stress during this pandemic. They're often, literally, they are on the front lines

in terms of demands on them. And at the same time, there's often a diminishing or absence of psychosocial supports. I think this brings us back in many ways to the fact that we are inherently a social species and when we have something this socially disruptive and demanding at the same time, it is really a major destabilizing influence on people's mental health.

Listen to this. The unpaid, caregivers had an increase in substance use to 32.9% versus the other population at 6.3% suicidal ideation, 30.7% versus 3.6% in this in the other group. It's such a huge difference. And I see it. We had a, we had a lady come over to our house with her daughter and she's been, you know, doing the homeschooling. she's been working full-time and she hasn't been connecting with other human beings you know and I think that the social

it's the lack of social support I mean she had this like oral hunger she just needed to talk you know and we felt it really intensely and I'm feeling that from so many of my clients right now just this like loneliness this despair this disconnection you know, from things that they used to find connecting. Well, you know, people have been isolated from other people. They've been isolated from the activities they use to keep themselves stable.

And in many cases, people have been asked to, for essential workers, okay, they're still employed, they're working, which is a good thing, but it's a demand. They're also providing care at home. They've also, in many cases, become the school teacher. those are enormous demands. Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you're in that place where you also need help, don't feel afraid to reach out. You know, this is a good time to pull into some of the resources that you can connect with. You know, even as health care givers, you know, the people that are on the forefront, we are also, I think, more exhausted, more stressed.

because not only is our jobs often increased in demand and the patients have increased in severity, but as well we come home to family structures and family systems that have been stressed out, kids that haven't had the normal connections with friends, you know, partners that may be more stressed out in their roles as well. So I think it's just been a tough time for all of us. And so it's good to get help. I personally have been seen a therapist once a week, which I wasn't. before this, but I realized I needed to get back into that. And so, yeah, I highly recommend it to to people who are listening to this.