Over the last 8 weeks, we have all become aware of Coronavirus, or what is now known as COVID-19. At the time of writing this, 110,665 people across the world have been infected, with over 3,831 deaths. It is being referred to as a global health emergency, although the WHO are holding back on calling it a Pandemic to try to restrict panic…
Over the same time period, it is estimated that 122,740 people died by suicide across the world. In 2016, suicide accounted for 1.4% of all deaths worldwide, making it the 18th leading cause of death.
On 6th March 2020, it was announced that the UK was to spend £46m more in the fight against COVID-19. In May 2018, the Government announced their investment of £25m across 3 years to reduce suicide.
COVID-19 has taken us completely by storm and has disrupted millions of people’s lives. From no longer being able to buy toilet roll in your weekly shop, cancelling holiday plans, cancelling of events, redundancies and of course, the health impacts. But mental health illness does exactly the same and is one of the main causes of the overall disease burden worldwide ; depending on the severity of the diagnosis, the symptoms experienced vary dramatically.
With COVID-19, in roughly 80 per cent of cases, people experience mild symptoms, 14 per cent of cases the virus causes severe disease, including pneumonia, and shortness of breath. In about five per cent of patients it is critical, leading to respiratory failure, septic shock and multiple organ failure. This is similar to depression, the most common mental health illness. It was found in a US study that 20.1 per cent of cases were severe with remainder being mild depression. It has also been estimated that the lifetime risk of suicide among patients with untreated depressive disorder is nearly 20%
Chronic stress has been linked to suppression of the immune system, increasing your chances of becoming ill or altering the course of an illness if you already have one. Deaths due to COVID-19 are higher in those with pre-existing conditions.
So you might think, one major difference between stress and COVID-19 is that stress in theory is not contagious. However…. there is more and more research coming out that shows that when people are displaying emotional and behavioural symptoms of stress, it can have a negative impact on us and change our emotions and behaviours. So actually, it pretty much is contagious, just not maybe to the rate of COVID-19.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve spoken with people about both COVID-19 and stress that believe they are a conspiracy, those that are carrying on as normal, those that are putting a little more effort into their own health and safety and those have hit panic mode and are stock-piling ‘essentials’.
I am at no-point suggesting that COVID-19 does not need to be addressed or trying to minimise the social and economic impact that it has having on the population, I merely want to encourage us to spend as much time looking at the current stats around mental health as looking at the worldometers of COVID-19.
With COVID-19, organisations and governments are encouraging people to put their safety first and think about how to complete their day to day tasks without putting themselves at risk. When was the last time that happened at your workplace?
Tell us that Stress Matters to you and we will help you put the health and safety of your team first all the time.
