SOURCE: FEE.ORG


In California and other parts of the country, Americans are headed back to lockdown or otherwise facing renewed restrictions on their day-to-day lives amid another spike of COVID-19. Yet a new Gallup poll shows these lockdowns come as people are already struggling with their mental health.
“Americans' latest assessment of their mental health is worse than it has been at any point in the last two decades,” Gallup reports.

The new polling found that 34 percent of respondents said their mental health was “excellent,” which is 9 points down from 2019. Similarly, 85 percent of Americans had rated their mental health as “good or excellent” in 2019. Just 76 percent did this year.

Image Credit: Gallup
This poll only further docuмents an ongoing trend.
As Jon Miltimore previously explained for FEE.org, the Centers for Disease Control found that 1 in 4 young Americansconsidered ѕυιcιdє this past summer amid life under lockdown and unprecedented levels of social isolation. In one anecdote that painfully demonstrates this broader trend, a California hospital doctor told local news in May that during lockdown he witnessed “a year's worth of ѕυιcιdє attempts in the last four weeks."

Much of the decline in mental health over the last 9 months can reasonably be attributed to pandemic lockdowns rather than COVID-19 itself.
Why? Well, consider that for the aforementioned suicidal young adults, the actual mortality risk of COVID-19 is close to zero. It's the shuttering of their schools, closures of their offices, and isolation from family, friends, and community that has affected them so drastically.
And the negative health effects, both physical and mental, of social isolation are well-docuмented. Consider thisreport from the New York Times:

A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent.
Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age.
Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us.