Author: Christopher Gonzalez

The World Health Organization posted an article on March 2,2022 detailing the damage that the coronavirus has caused over the past two years to the mental health of people across the world.  In the first year of the pandemic, the article states that the prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%.  This huge increase in mental health problems from the global population has prompted the World Health Organization to issue a warning for countries around the world to increase their mental health services and support for people suffering from mental health issues.  The organization has described that the reasons for such a huge increase in global mental health problems is because of the increased stress from the social isolation caused from the pandemic, and peoples’ lessened ability to work and seek support from friends and family.  Stress caused by the fear of infection, loneliness from being stuck at home, and financial instability caused by the pandemic have also been stress factors.  The ones suffering the most from the pandemic as stated by WHO are young people who are at higher risk of suicide and self-harm, women, and people with pre-existing physical and mental health conditions.  A severe increase in the frequency of mental health care problems has caused a huge strain on the availability of mental health care services, causing it to be unobtainable by people who need it most.  WHO and its partners are doing their best to make sure mental health care in as many forms as possible become available for as many people as possible.

“In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25%, according to a scientific brief released by the World Health Organization (WHO) today.”

“Since the early days of the pandemic, WHO and partners have worked to develop and disseminate resources in multiple languages and formats to help different groups cope with and respond to the mental health impacts of COVID-19.”

“While the pandemic has generated interest in and concern for mental health, it has also revealed historical under-investment in mental health services. Countries must act urgently to ensure that mental health support is available to all.”

The World Health Organization is the world’s leading power in global health care and maintenance who are issuing statements of warning and action for people all over the world who are suffering from the increased prevalence on anxiety and depression caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

They speak in an urgent tone, trying to convince countries around the world to invest more in their mental health care services in order to assist the most people in need of them during these difficult times.  Their influence as the specialized global health agency of the United Nations itself gives weight to their words and importance to take action and make sure that everyone who is suffering from mental health degradation can obtain the necessary health care to combat it.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed societies around the world, and what are its lasting impacts on the way humans think and live? 

I am interested in this question because it’s such a recent development that there is still so much left to be learned about how a worldwide catastrophe such as a pandemic can change the face of humanity.  I want to know on the large and small scale how both individual lives and entire populations have been forced to adjust to the most radical and intense event that humans have had ever experienced in decades.  I want to know if any of these changes that took place became normalized to the point where they became permanent additions to how humans choose to live with each other.  I did not experience a huge shift in how I lived my life during the last two years in which this pandemic happened. The rest of the world went through huge shifts without me and I want to know what they were all about.

In my research I expect to find that the pandemic has radically changed how the fundamentals of the medical system works directly because of how huge of the strain the pandemic has put on the infrastructure of it.  Hospitals now must definitely have in place preparations in the event that another pandemic could happen.  Places and business have had to make themselves pandemic proof in order to adjust to changes such as social distancing and because of that might make those changes permanent additions to their environments.  How people interact with each other was a huge part of the pandemic as I have learned. No longer being able to physically interact with other people must have been draining on most as humans are social creatures that need interactions with other humans in order to feel stable.  Online interactions must have increased ten-fold as it became one of the only means to speak with others through platforms like zoom and discord.  Educational Institutions were probably one of the places worst hit by the pandemic as students could not have been allowed to walk through school grounds and thus online courses had to have increased by a huge amount in order to compensate for the lack of physical presence in schools.

Any new information that I find that goes against what I expected is completely welcome because it is still valuable information about the ongoings of what the pandemic has wrought on human civilization.  It’ll probably surprise me and thus change my views on what I thought was possible for events like the pandemic to change in us.