Rescuing Reality|Covid 19|mental health and the consequences of ‘stay-at-home’

This week I learned that UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres says the stay-at-home policy invoked as a defense against Covid 19 has resulted in a “horrifying increase in domestic violence.” 

Was that a surprise to anyone? Well, it shouldn’t have been. After approximately 200,000 years as ‘Homo Sapiens’ (the ‘wise hominid’), we ought to know ourselves well enough to know that this was guaranteed.

There will be many studies of the Covid 19 event in years to come. I’m sure some of them will address not only domestic violence, but also an increase in the break-up of families, an increase in depression, drug abuse, suicides, etc. There will undoubtedly be deaths attributable to the cure rather than the disease. 

Yet since Covid 19 arrived, our leaders, and most of the media, only seem able to focus the corona virus. Mental illness – what’s that? 

Domestic violence, etc.,  should have been included in the equation determining whether these draconian measures were worth taking.

In the meantime, the economy has been put into an ‘induced coma’ as someone so aptly said.  The head of Germany’s Lufthansa has just said that they believe it will take years for the airline industry to fully recover. I suspect the entire tourism industry, the world’s largest employer, could say that too.

Yes, in a remarkably reckless experiment, something that has never been done before, and with almost no debate over it, and apparently little planning for it, we have largely shut down the social/economic world. 

When it comes to home life, and the mental state of vulnerable people as this shutdown intensifies, my concern is growing. I really don’t think we understand what we are doing.