Politics
Managing mental health during COVID-19
Written by Allison Brown
We sat down for a Q and A with UAB’s Director of Student Counseling, Dr. Angela Stowe, to get real about the struggle of mental health during COVID-19. What is it about this time that is affecting our mental health?
What is a normal response to all of this stress?
“We certainly can’t put it down as to one or even two things. We’ve never been through a pandemic like this before. We are all living through unprecedented times. Lots of uncertainty, no kind of idea of when we might be through it. We’ll get through it. We know that, but we just don’t know when
“I think the normal response is that there is no normal response. So pretty much anything somebody might be doing, feeling, experiencing the ways that you might behave being would be an expected response to such an unexpected kind of time. People might be sleeping too much, not sleeping enough, eating too much, not eating enough, changes in the level of how you feel like interacting with people. Feeling emotions, super, super strong, or maybe feeling apathy and not feeling them. I think people might feel physical symptoms, heart might be racing. You might notice that you’re fatigued more than usual.
So, we’re all having to do things differently. I definitely would imagine you know, isolation, it’s just so hard to connect or inability to kind of do the things that we’re used to do doing is weigh in on people. The chronic nature, kind of just the prolonged nature of the stress is definitely increasing over time.
I think people’s behaviors may Financial stress is a huge, huge be a sense of kind of agitation or piece of a lot of our students. I always on edge could happen as know. And not just students, just well. Fear anxiety, a lot of grief. It Photo of Dr. Angela Stowe, people are experiencing a lot of courtesy of Dr. Stowe would be a normal reaction because financial stress whether it’s changes there’s just so many losses of how we do things in jobs or just the economy, we know all of the and even major life events and a lot of loss events that have been happening over the past with COVID as well, maybe just true death that few months related to police brutality and race people have experienced. and racism that is definitely added stress to many, many people. So, loss has happened in a lot of different ways loss of what your college experience The upcoming election is definitely a piece of it is supposed to be like right now. It’s totally as well. It’s a very emotionally charged time. different than how you had imagined it. I’m sure. Those things, that folks may have had a year And that’s a loss as well. And so, a lot of grief ago that helped you cope and do things, but a big frustration, anger, exhaustion, all those now it’s a lot harder. It’s just a lot harder to do things I think are pretty normal and common anything, you know? So, a lot of things I think reactions. are going on that are affecting folks right now. I also don’t want to forget if you’re feeling good, And it’s all under the big umbrella of COVID.” that’s a common reaction right now too.”
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