EMILY REYNOLDS
ILLUSTRATION BY MATT HARRISON CLOUGH
Even if you don’t personally live with the same problems that many of us do, then a moment’s reflection will reveal how the current crisis of physical health will inevitably bear on mental health too. With millions infected by Covid-19 and hundreds of thousands dead around the world, no area of life has gone unaffected: businesses closed, jobs lost, friends separated, relatives grieving. And these are merely the more obvious effects. Beyond the lost lives and livelihoods there is a ubiquitous worry about getting sick, plus a pervasive sense of uncertainty, insecurity and gnawing anxiety that has seeped through the locked-down economy. In the UK, around nine million people are expected to be furloughed, many of them facing an agonisingly precarious future. Sinking incomes have already translated into around a million new claims for universal credit, a new benefit that was synonymous with delays and hardship before the sudden crisis hit it.