FMP 061 • COVID-19 Depression: Observations and Management (My Journey)

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“Adaptive Coping Strategy: Compartmentalize where possible.”

COVID-19 Depression

We are all going through so much. Each of us, whether you are a frontline healthcare professional or healthcare leader, is coping with the results of the ongoing pandemic in both adaptive and maladaptive ways. COVID-19 Depression is how we are now conceptualizing what we as individuals are experiencing and what we observe in others. Today, I provide a narrative of my own psychological and emotional difficulties that feel endlessly enduring as we enter the third year of living with this disease.

Episode Outline

Welcome to Episode 61: Managing COVID-19 Depression

1. What We Do:
   • Behavioural Medicine and Health Psychology
   • Providing easily accessible content designed to help you design your own transformative experience.
2. Today:
   • My thoughts on living into the second year of COVID-19 and the impact on mood for myself and those around me.
3. Services Review:
   • Finding My Psych offers both core and enhanced services focused on promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
     • (Core) Foundations: Wellness Planning Workshop
     • (Core) Walking For Vitality: Powering Up
     • (Core) Running For Fitness: 5k Build-Up
     • (Enhanced) Alcohol Free Check-in <NEW!>

COVID-19 Depression

1. Observations (Personal Experience)
   • Work in healthcare administration.
   • Frontline worker exhaustion.
   • Ongoing hiring crisis.
   • Unions taking advantage of Covid exhaustion.
   • Media taking advantage of fear for clicks.
2. Presentation and Definition
   • Deep feeling of impending doom.
   • Hopelessness and helplessness.
   • Fleeting thoughts of not wanting to go on.
   • Sleep disturbance.
   • Obsessive thinking – Difficult to refocus on the positive.
   • Physical exhaustion from increased levels of stress hormone.
3. Maladaptive Coping
   • Increased use of THC edibles.
   • Increased use of ETOH.
   • Bimodal focus – Work and home with nothing in-between.
   • Eating disorder (controlled vs. excess).
   • Purchasing with intent to distract – Brief hit of dopamine.
   • Distracting with anger (at others, politics, etc.)
4. Adaptive Coping
   • Physical activity (running)
   • Slow activities and food.
   • Media stimulus control.
   • Social support (partner, friends, family, church, colleagues).
   • Compartmentalize where possible.
5. Your Feedback
   • What are you doing to cope right now?
   • What maladaptive approaches are you buried into?
   • What adaptive approaches are you practicing?