Mental Health

Betty Pfefferbaum and Carol S. North (13 April 2020), “Mental Health and the Covid-19 Pandemic,” The New England Journal of Medicine
Pfefferbaum and North describe the mental health challenges pandemics create for both health care professionals and the general public. A “recent review of psychological sequelae in samples of quarantined people… revealed numerous emotional outcomes, including stress, depression, irritability, insomnia, fear, confusion, anger, frustration, boredom, and stigma associated with quarantine, some of which persisted after the quarantine was lifted.” Health care professionals treating patients for COVID-19 might not have the expertise in mental health to help their patients deal with these emotions. Further, health care professionals might themselves be suffering from uncertainty and other mental health concerns due to a lack of equipment, longer work hours, and concerns about infecting their families.

Rob Cover (17 June 2021), “Identity in the disrupted time of COVID-19: Performativity, crisis, mobility and ethics,” Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 4(1)
Cover examines the ruptures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic – particularly ruptures to mobility and performative identity. These ruptures were accompanied by bodily anxieties, such as the fear of infection. Cover suggests that an ethics of cohabitation explains the importance of lockdowns. He argues that framing public health protections in terms of the interconnected and shared vulnerability of corporeal subjects could help reconstitute subjectivity, as rupture transforms cultural practices.