Four years since the start of the COVID19 lockdowns, people are again talking about how these events continue to affect our mental health. Tony Kirkman, who runs the Piatt County Mental Health Center, shared his thoughts on the WHOW Morning Show. He stressed that young adults and the wider community still feel deep-rooted impacts.
Ongoing Struggles for Young Adults
Kirkman pointed out a concerning pattern in young adults, they’re dealing with higher rates of depression and anxiety now. The pandemic disrupted key phases in their lives, hurting their ability to socialize and cope emotionally. They’ve lost out on big moments like graduation ceremonies and important social events, and it’s causing long-lasting trouble.
The Importance of Social Emotional Learning
School closures have had a major impact on students. There’s a clear need to catch up on skills for understanding and sharing feelings, especially in places where it’s usually hard to talk about emotions, like with young boys. Adding lessons on this topic in school could really help reduce the shame often linked to mental health.
A Testament to Societal Resilience
The COVID19 crisis has been tough, but it also proved how strong people and communities can be. Folks came together to create support networks and more people volunteered, showing they’re ready to help others. Workers on the front lines kept going bravely through scary times, while local businesses and projects quickly changed their ways to handle new challenges, clearly displaying society’s ability to bounce back.
Using our ability to come together in tough times.
The Important Job of Mental Health Services
The health crisis has shown us how much we need strong mental health services. Kirkman’s work with the Illinois Youth Survey is meant to give us a better understanding of what the pandemic has done. This information will help create specific programs to aid those impacted. Taking such steps before problems worsen is key, and it reminds us we must always focus on mental wellbeing in our towns and cities.
Dealing With Tension in Relationships and Fixing Community Bonds
The health crisis hasn’t just been hard on our physical wellbeing. It’s put a strain on friendships and family ties too, especially over different opinions about staying safe. Young folks have felt this strain deeply as they’ve lost touch with their friends’ connections which are super important. We now need to put effort into mending these community ties and rebuilding support groups that have fallen apart during these challenging times.
Making a Roadmap
In the future, we’ll need to work hard on several things to get better. We must improve mental health support, help people learn how to handle their emotions better, and fix our bonds with each other. Kirkman’s thoughts show us not just the problems but also how strong and flexible we are as a group. This gives us hope that someday, everyone will think mental health is really important.
Boosting Mental Health Care
We’ve got to pump more money and resources into mental health care because more people are asking for help. We need to make sure that mental health services like therapy are available to more people, especially those who live in areas where these services aren’t easy to get.
- Building Stronger Communities
We should push for everyone in the community to get involved and have a say in what happens locally.
- Finding Ways to Help Out
Offering your time to volunteer and building places that make it easy for people to get together are really important for fixing the strong community ties we need for our mental health.
- Fighting Against Vaccine Doubts and Wrong Information
Teaching people to understand the truth about vaccines is super important for everyone’s health. Being open about how vaccines are made and what their side effects are will make people trust them more and lead to more people getting vaccinated.
Wrapping It Up
Dealing with the pandemic has been tough, but it’s also shown us how strong we can be together. Looking back at the last four years, it’s obvious that we need to go all in on helping each other’s mental health and supporting our communities if we want to make it through what’s coming. By keeping up the work to figure out and fix what the pandemic did to us, we can hope for a future where taking care of our mental health is just as normal as taking care of a cold.
Now, things are put in order of importance, and groups of people are more united and have better relationships than they ever did before.
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