What has happened to Anxiety and Depression since Covid?

What has happened to Anxiety and Depression since Covid?

The numbers are staggering.  Men with anxiety or depression diagnosis have gone up 27%.  For women – it’s worse. rates are up 40%.   Now for the really bad news… A study in California showed that 75% of teens are diagnosed with anxiety.   40% are diagnosed with depression.

There is so much to unpack here.  As much as we want to think we are almost back to normal, for a high percentage of society the effects of the Covid lockdown are still present and causing problems especially with depression and anxiety.  Lets face it, as we look back with 20/20 vision we can see that Covid itself was not the huge problem it was made out to be for most people.  We are finding out that vaccines didn’t fight the virus in fact all the studies now show that people who took them actually faired worse than those that didn’t.

The big problem with Covid lockdowns

covid anxiety and depression

But the big problem with covid was the problems it caused in our minds with the worry and wearing masks.  All of that had an impact on our psychological health.  When you don’t think you are safe to go out unless you have a mask on and are actually scared of people who don’t have one your brain gets rewired as to what is safe.  Humans are social beings.  When we can’t see each other’s faces and sit down and talk to them, there is a huge psychological impact to your brain.  this takes its toll especially with anxiety and depression.

This combined with the fact that, because of covid, so many people lived much of their life wearing a mask.  This created oxygen depravation and also having to breath in the toxins their body was trying to expel.  None of this stress was traumatic by itself, but when you add up all the little daily stress that accumulated over months and months of the “covid crisis” , the toll to the psyche of so many people was devastating.

With all that stress, people were put into something called, “sympathetic overdrive”.  So many of the symptoms of anxiety and depression are caused by this state of mind.  It is because when your brain enters this state, the way it processes things changes.  If we can flip the switch and go from the sympathetic brain mindset to the parasympathetic mindset the symptoms would disappear.  Much of this is due to Covid.

We can help you diagnose is this is your problem using computerized scans.  Give us a call and schedule your scan today  402-333-4848