Mental Health Support

The people we spoke with described a wide variety of ways in which living with long COVID had an impact on their mental health. Some were people who had experienced anxiety, depression or other mental health challenges before COVID. Several, though not all, said that their experience with long COVID had made those conditions worse. A number of participants had reached out for professional mental health support to help them cope with specific symptoms or with chronic illness more generally. Some had also been prescribed medications for depression and anxiety. Most participants who had mental health support found it to be very helpful.

 

Accessing Mental Health Support

Accessing mental health support for long COVID could be challenging because of limited availability, cost, and the need for professionals specialized in dealing with chronic illness. White Feather saw a counsellor who told her “… straight up I’m not actually qualified in dealing with disease trauma.” Cathy had access to some mental health support through Worker’s Compensation. But, as she explained, “I could have used a lot more psychological and emotional support with this … There needs to be people who are counsellors, psychologists who are trained in long COVID, who can help people.” Kari made a similar point. She said, “The mental health side of long COVID is massive … That’s where there needs to be more help … People can’t afford 250 dollars an hour for a psychologist.” Paulina described herself as experiencing anxiety and depression because her life “has been turned upside down.” She explained “I’m still on the wait list to see a counsellor to help me with the grieving process and my new life.”

 

Benefits of Mental Health Support

Kristen started working with a therapist which, she said, “has changed my life dramatically. I love my therapist and we’ve done a lot of work to get through such a hard year … When you deal with so much sometimes you don’t even know you’re dealing with it because you’re just trying to survive.” William had taken a similar approach. He explained, “I’m with a therapist right now. I’ve seen a psychologist and a psychiatrist … and I think that’s really helpful for me specifically because I was so independent I didn’t really have this broad network of people that I could reach out to.” Victor found that his anxiety increased dramatically living with long COVID. However, moving in with friends and taking medication helped a lot. He told us, “When I was alone in my apartment, not taking meds for anxiety … I was a total wreck … It was a feeling of desperation that I hadn’t had before … Since I came here, I started taking the meds … it’s like night and day.”

 

Getting Worse Even With Support

Unfortunately, even with professional support and/or medication, some of the people we spoke with were experiencing serious mental health effects due to the strain of living with long COVID. Jennifer 1 told us, “When I started my COVID journey with my psychologist things were OK. Here I am a year and a bit later and I now have severe anxiety and depression, and I am on an antidepressant. I am not ashamed to be on an antidepressant, but never did I think that I would hit a point that I would need to be on one.” Cher experienced severe worsening of an existing depression. She explained,  “I had struggled with depression before in my life, but have always been able to kind of keep it under wraps. Wasn’t really able to keep it under wraps anymore … so we ended up going down the road of seeing a psychiatrist and changing huge amounts of my meds … I was pretty suicidal every single day, just because I was like ‘what am I supposed to do with this pain? How am I supposed to live my life?’ … My psychologist has been great just in working on ‘this is just how it is’ so I don’t need to wallow in the sadness of it. I can accept it and breathe it but then I have to move on from there.”