Resilience in Crisis: Mental Health Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic

In late 2019, the world was hit by the coronavirus (COVID-19) infection. Every country responded differently to the pandemic, but there was a general lockdown where most people had to change their way of life to minimize social interactions and prevent the spread of the disease. As of November 17th, 2023, there have been over 771 million confirmed COVID-19 infections and almost 7 million associated deaths (Reutter et al., 2024).

Due to the physical danger of COVID-19, there was also a threat to mental health due to stress and uncertainty, which raised concerns about the resilience of society. Overall, there was a 25% increase in depression and anxiety symptoms, affecting both individuals with pre-existing mental health issues and those who were previously healthy. The considered most at-risk groups were females, young individuals, people with financial instability, those with inadequate physical space during lockdown, and individuals with preexisting mental health conditions such as childhood traumas, social anxiety, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and adverse life events (Reutter et al., 2024).

The imminent need of learning new strategies to improve mental health was observed in younger individuals. The Psychiatry Department of the Oxford University, conducted a trial to prove mental health difficulties of secondary students (13yo on average) by comparing it to a group that did the same test before the lockdowns and observed that the pandemic group displayed a general worsening of their mental well-being: experiencing depression 8.5% more frequent than pre pandemic (0.3%) as well as social, emotional and behavioral difficulties 7.9% more frequent than before the pandemic (3.5%). These data were recovered only from individuals self-reported their race as white (Montero-Marin et al., 2023).

Surprisingly, groups with low risk of having mental health difficulties experienced the greatest deterioration of stress strain; showing that in stressful moments coping strategies are completely game changers to avoid the trauma transcendence. Additionally, social interactions showed being very helpful in an individual’s well-being: a kind environment and even partial school attendance was better than full absence were shown to be enough to prevent some of the symptoms (Montero-Marin et al., 2023).

In academic environments at the University level, in Zurich, mental health workshops already existed before COVID-19 but during and after the pandemic, attendance was increasing in numbers, showing the need for students to have tools useful for enhancing or regaining their mental health. This was also observed at Imperial College London, where the lockdowns had been prolonged. Of course the teachers needed to have the tools but the same students and postdocs were the ones taking the initiative to organize the workshops (Hall, 2024).

A computer student of the University of Tübingen in Germany recognizes that scientists and their students tend to over identify themselves and reflect challenges in their career as their personal ones, so any success or failure in their career no matter how big or small will also be felt as one deep in their personality; however “mental health toolkit” can help them to separate their career from their identity and to accept that any “success” or “failure” during the career is not a description of their value but just a part of their career (Hall, 2024).

Imperial College London has observed that part of the solution is to have more social interactions and social meaningful connection, thus they made more social rooms available for everyone in the community as well as voluntary retreats to build more connections with their peers. Similarly, the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS) (Germany) organizes “boot-camps” for students and faculty members can openly socialize among them.  Additionally, they organize annual check-ins to discuss group dynamics or issues with staff, thesis advisory committees where also problems with supervisors are addressed and finally, they survey their student’s mental health. They plan to do it twice per year for the next 3 years to probe the mental health of the institute, to increase the job satisfaction among the PhD students regardless of their gender. These measures have been implemented in most of IMPRS throughout the country (Hall, 2024). Although the problem of over self-demandingness and overidentifying is not completely solved yet, the implementation for kinder environments throughout important research centers can bring it closer to being solved.

Coming back to the groups of mental health impaired participants, their recovery process after the pandemic was still tracked to detect posttraumatic growth (transformative challenges). This group experienced greater psychological strain after than before the pandemic but also a smaller increase during the peak of infections. Female participants showed more psychological burden independent from the pandemic and to not benefit from adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Concluding that most likely, the individuals of this trial were transformed by the pandemic, it could be explained by a shifting frame of reference and probably they regained their happiness levels by appreciating the regained freedom that was previously taken for granted. They didn’t find evidence of long-lasting negative effects of the pandemic on the average psychological strain of individuals with mental health impairment, which is also not present in healthy cohorts (Reutter et al., 2024).

This study also showed that reduction of loneliness through social interactions and the presence of coping strategies were shown to be a buffer against deprivation of mental health, especially important for people who already suffered from mental health impairments before the pandemic (Reutter et al., 2024).

What we experienced during the pandemic was such an extreme isolation that it became very clear that the tools and atmosphere we had were not enough for us to cope with the situation. From the evidence showed in the mentioned trials, it is very clear that if we want to be prepared for hard times -that will anyway be in our lives, like a PhD for example- we should take our time to: 1.Find coping strategies that suit us better to heal past situations that can be traumatic for us, like the pandemic was for many people. We humans are social beings -that’s undeniable- and although humans have the capacity to adapt even to the most horrible conditions, their happiness levels will depend on the tools they have (Frankl, 1946). 2. Not avoiding the attention that feelings request by a difficult situation and finally, 3. Surround ourselves with a good environment. The last point makes it so important that research institutions and Universities can implement mental health programs and adjust policies to keep a healthier and kinder environment that promotes social connectedness considering different types of personalities, needs and vulnerabilities, especially when it comes to young people.

Unhealed trauma can make it very hard to keep or create healthy relationships with people or even with our careers (Shiro, 2023), which can bring us back to an isolated state of mind, even without a pandemic happening.

 

References

Frankl, V. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning (2015 (3th)). Herder.

Hall, S. (2024). How PhD students and other academics are fighting the mental-health crisis in science. Nature, 631, 496–498. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02225-8

Montero-Marin, J., Hinze, V., Mansfield, K., Slaghekke, Y., Blakemore, S. J., Byford, S., Dalgleish, T., Greenberg, M. T., Viner, R. M., Ukoumunne, O. C., Ford, T., & Kuyken, W. (2023). Young People’s Mental Health Changes, Risk, and Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 6(9), E2335016. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.35016

Reutter, M., Hutterer, K., Gründahl, M., Gall, D., Dannlowski, U., Domschke, K., Leehr, E. J., Lonsdorf, T. B., Lueken, U., Reif, A., Schiele, M. A., Zwanzger, P., Pauli, P., Hein, G., & Gamer, M. (2024). Mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with psychological distress. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55839-3

Shiro, E. (2023). Unexpected Gift of Trauma. Harvest.

 

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About the Author

Rigel Salinas-Gamboa is PhD in Max Plant for plant breeding in Cologne, Germany, and a 2024 Plantae Fellow. She is also very interested in science communication and in creating a collaborative atmosphere among scientists.  You can find her on X: @Rigelitactica.