Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Five years ago today, France's president announced that the country and its people were at war.
00:05The aggressor, COVID-19, the weapons used to fight it, lockdowns, masks and eventually vaccines.
00:12For months on end, people lived isolated lives, making sure to keep more than two metres apart.
00:17Over the space of three years, the virus said to have killed over 7 million people worldwide.
00:22Many still left suffering symptoms of long COVID.
00:25And then there's the psychological impact.
00:27To take a look at where we are on that, we can speak to consultant psychologist Dr Heather Sequeira.
00:31Thanks so much for your time and joining us here on France 24.
00:35It's five years since, you know, well, the lockdown here in France
00:39was put in place five years since the UN declared it a pandemic.
00:44Is COVID still impacting people's mental health today?
00:49Unfortunately, it is, yes.
00:51We have a surge in anxiety and depression.
00:54That surge during the pandemic, and it really hasn't gone down a lot since then.
01:01Really complicated reasons.
01:02We can't pinpoint it to one thing, but we're looking at a behavioural shift in society
01:09that's still operating now.
01:11Things like alcohol use.
01:13We've got social isolation.
01:15People are more lonely.
01:16It's particularly affecting young people and children.
01:21And there's still a lot of unprocessed trauma from that time
01:25because people couldn't process it properly at the time.
01:28And at the time, I mean, we ended up being afraid of fellow humans and,
01:32you know, how to interact with them.
01:34Is that still lingering?
01:35I mean, you see people going back to concerts, going back on flights.
01:39So I think it affects certain groups more than others.
01:42So the people going to concerts, maybe less so.
01:45But I think younger people in particular,
01:47particularly people who were babies at the time of trauma,
01:50they missed out on core stages of their development.
01:54And the same with younger people, teenagers,
01:56people who were meant to be making that life stage
01:59of breaking away from their parents a little bit,
02:02mixing with friends and other people exploring the world,
02:05really missed out on that.
02:07And we're really seeing a lack of confidence,
02:09a lack of social confidence and increasing levels of avoidance in those groups.
02:15And what can be done to help people in those situations today?
02:20I think we need to put mental health as a priority
02:24because our mental health services were struggling
02:27even at the time of COVID and now they are completely quaking.
02:31So there's long, long waiting lists for help,
02:34particularly, again, for children and young people.
02:37And again, if people have to sit on waiting lists for therapy as children,
02:42they're again missing out on key stages of development.
02:45So we really need to prioritise that.
02:48That's my number one thing.
02:49And then getting away from screens as well would be another,
02:52helping people interact face to face a lot more.
02:55Yeah, people need to push themselves out of that isolation,
02:59perhaps comfort zone as it is now,
03:01into pushing themselves to face their fear and meet people.
03:05Absolutely. We've become too reliant on digital means.
03:08So we're hiding behind a screen a lot of the time.
03:11So again, it's key people. It's not everybody.
03:15But we really need to help people stretch out,
03:17as you say, outside their comfort zone.
03:19Because even that daily interaction at the shop,
03:21I believe, is vital for our mental health.
03:24It's really vital.
03:25Just that smile or sharing a word with somebody,
03:29a small conversation, a small act of kindness,
03:32such as opening a door for somebody,
03:33can make such a difference in people's lives.
03:36You mentioned there the lack of resources
03:39in terms of what's available in terms of mental health.
03:42But part of the COVID pandemic was the loss of faith,
03:45if you like, or the falling down of our systems.
03:49Is that something that people, you know,
03:51has impacted how people live today?
03:53Absolutely. We have less trust in authority.
03:57We have less trust in science as a population.
04:01And there is also economic,
04:03ongoing economic costs from the pandemic,
04:06which are affecting people in terms of their job security
04:10and how they think about the future.
04:12So all that's coming into it as well.
04:14So we're looking at a multifaceted problem
04:16with many different strands to it.
04:18So it's not one simple solution that we can put in place here,
04:22but we need to be looking at it as a whole.
04:24Now, you're coming to us from the United Kingdom,
04:27which reacted slightly different than France did
04:30when it comes to lockdowns.
04:31They went into lockdown mode a good bit later.
04:34A lot of people say that that was
04:35because there was a lack of trust from the government
04:37in the individual people to work together.
04:40Is that how you see it?
04:43I'm not sure.
04:44I don't know if it was that much later.
04:45I think it was the 20th of March we went into lockdown.
04:49So it wasn't very much later.
04:51But, and do you think that overall,
04:54I mean, in Ireland, we called it cocooning.
04:56In France, it was a lockdown.
04:58So, and we were declared to be at war.
05:00Do you think that how governments handled
05:03the pandemic had an impact on how people live through it
05:07and currently are today?
05:08Very much, yeah.
05:09There was a lot of fear-based messaging,
05:12which helped people stay indoors.
05:14It perhaps aided what the government wanted us to do,
05:18but it has now left us being more avoidant as a society.
05:22And we all know that facing our fears,
05:24pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones
05:26is the way to get over fears.
05:28And unfortunately, I think we are kind of still stuck
05:31in an avoidant reaction.
05:33So we're stepped back from things that scare us
05:36rather than moving into them.
05:38And that increasing social isolation
05:40is one of the things that has fallen out from that.
05:44And as you say, it comes as well
05:45with our increasing reliance on media to connect to people.
05:49Have you seen any positive impact over this pandemic?
05:52A lot of people at the time said
05:54the fact that it forced them to take
05:56a slower style of life, of living,
06:00did make them change what their priorities were,
06:02gave them time to reflect
06:04on how they're living their lives.
06:06I think it did at the time,
06:07but I wonder if we've lost quite a bit of that now,
06:10because we're now back into that rush,
06:12more, better, best kind of mentality.
06:16So I'm not sure that that's still the case.
06:19I think one positive is that we are now able
06:22to use remote means such as we're doing right now
06:25to communicate with each other.
06:27But we need to be really careful
06:28that we don't over-rely on that.
06:30Yeah, that isolation having such a wide impact
06:33on our world in more ways than one.
06:35Dr. Hezosker, thank you so much
06:36for joining us here on France 24.