Page 172 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

3.2. Mental health and well-being

For years now, an epidemic of mental health has engulfed
much of the world. The pandemic has already made it worse and
will continue to do so. Most psychologists (and certainly all those
we talked to) seem to concur with the judgement expressed in

May 2020 by one of their peers: “The pandemic has had a
devastating effect on mental health.” [149]

Unlike physical illness, people with mental health issues often
have wounds that are invisible to a non-professional’s naked eye.

Yet, in the past decade, mental health specialists report an
explosion of mental health problems ranging from depression and
suicide to psychosis and addictive disorders. In 2017, an
estimated 350 million people around the globe were suffering from

depression. At that time, the WHO predicted that depression
would become the second main cause of disease burden globally
by 2020 and that it would overtake ischemic heart disease as the
leading cause of disease burden by 2030. In the US, the CDC

estimated in 2017 that depression affected more than 26% of
adults. Approximately 1 in 20 report moderate to severe
symptoms. At that time, it also predicted that 25% of American
adults would suffer from mental illness during the year and almost

50% would develop at least one mental illness during their
lifetime. [150] Similar figures (but maybe not as severe) and trends
exist in most countries around the world. In the workplace, the

issue of mental health has become one of the big elephants in the
corporate room. The epidemic of work-related stress, depression
and anxiety seems to be continuously getting worse. As a
revealing example, in 2017-2018 in the UK, stress, depression
and anxiety accounted for more than half (57%) of total working

days lost due to ill health. [151]

For many people, traversing the COVID-19 pandemic will be
defined as living a personal trauma. The scars inflicted may last

for years. To start with, in the early months of the outbreak, it was
all too easy to fall victim to the biases of availability and salience.
These two mental shortcuts caused us to obsess and ruminate

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