Nashaba Matin is a single mother with three daughters: Kaya, 17, Amber, 15, and Natalia, 13. She is also an NHS doctor, working full-time on the Covid-19 wards of the Royal London Hospital. Exhausted by her work, Matin has relied on her eldest daughter to provide a protective wing over her younger sisters. “I think they’ve all had to grow up a lot,” she says.
And Matin feels guilty. “The children are also desperately missing their friends and the extracurricular activities they normally have at school. Not only were they totally severed from their social support and all the things they love to do, they haven’t had parents at home to keep them company.” The girls have tried to be brave about it, she adds. “But I’m sure they have actually been quite worried. It’s been a really tough time for children.”
Matin’s story is a snapshot of lockdown Britain, a nation of isolated, often lonely women, men and children struggling to cope with the unseen threat of an unrelenting pandemic. And although Matin’s family is managing to cope, many others have not adapted so effectively in the past three months.
Last week, Nuffield Health reported that around 80% of British people working from home now feel lockdown has had a negative impact on their mental health, while a quarter of those (25%) said they were finding it difficult to cope with the emotional challenges of isolation.
In addition, the Office of National Statistics last week published a study which showed that 39% of people who are married or in a civil partnership now report high levels of anxiety, compared with 19% pre-pandemic. This doubling of anxiety levels is probably due to the stress of caring for others while also working and carrying out home-schooling duties.
“This is the wicked nature of a pandemic,” said Professor Simon Wessely, of King’s College London. “It creates intense anxiety, but the measures that we need to control the pandemic, which centre on suppressing our ability to interact socially, make it more difficult to manage that anxiety.”
Nor will these problems disappear as restrictions are lifted, psychologists warn. “This crisis is going to cause considerable, lasting anxiety for many people,” said Professor Til Wykes, of King’s College London.
According to Wykes, one out of four individuals is likely to have a mental health problem at some point in their life. “That was the situation before Covid arrived. Now, we are going to have extra new waves of people suffering from anxiety or depression or possibly more serious illnesses such as schizophrenia.”
Social and healthcare workers are likely to be some of the worst affected, she added. “They are experiencing disturbing events all the time and will experience post-traumatic symptoms, if not post-traumatic stress disorder itself. We know from the Sars and Mers outbreaks that frontline workers did go through such experiences.”
An illustration is provided by Alfred Batalla, a senior staff nurse at Homerton hospital in east London, who said working on the Covid-19 intensive care units (ICUs) had left him suffering from panic attacks. “I’m the happiest person, on the outside, but deep inside I’m now broken because of this,” he told the BBC.
In addition, patients who have spent days, sometimes weeks in ICUs are also likely to suffer psychological - as well physiological - reactions to their time in hospital, doctors warn.
Then there is the likely impact on another vulnerable group: children. Studies of their reactions to lockdown have revealed younger ones feel the greatest stress. Professor Cathy Creswell, of Oxford University, said a recent study of 10,000 families in the UK suggested primary school children were much more troubled by lockdown compared with secondary school pupils.
“Parents in our study reported significant increases in behavioural and emotional problems - tantrums and disobedience - for children aged 4 to 10 during lockdown while for those aged 11 to 16, parents actually reported a decrease in these problems,” she told The Observer.
As well as being less reliant on their often stressed parents during the day, a major factor, Creswell believed, may involve teenagers’ ability to keep contact with their peers, using phones and computers. “These are not natural ways for younger children to interact, and as a result they are left isolated and anxious.”
The crucial point is, as such stress takes root, it may leave this generation of young children much more vulnerable to anxiety and other difficulties as they grow older. “We need to provide support for these children, and even if that comes at a cost, we should be aware that the longer-term cost to the country will be far greater if this issue is not addressed now,” she warned.
Creswell said studies suggest families with children who have anxiety disorders or other mental health problems pay a heavy price. “They have been found to lose an average of £5,000 of annual income, mainly through lost employment – because they have to miss or give up work because their children cannot go to school or have to be taken to clinics.
“At the same time, there is a cost to society. It has to provide support for affected families, and providing that help is 20 times more costly than the support needed for an average family.”
This point was backed by Wykes. “There has not been proper investment in mental health in this country for a long time, but we desperately need it now if we want to deal with the rises in numbers of desperate, anxious people that we will face in coming years.”
