‘The constant state of anxiety and uncertainty, the isolation, the lack of meaning and purpose, these are all things that are accompanied with negative affect’
Our tendency to lock on to perceived threats is a remnant of our hunter-gatherer brains, anthropologist Samuel Veissière says. From a “fitness survival perspective,” it’s important to be able to identify threats in the environment. “We only became a predator much later in evolutionary history,” Veissière says. So we tend to over interpret risks. The human mind, he says, is very bad at estimating probability.
The findings come from the first wave in what will be a series of surveys by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, in collaboration with Delvinia, a research tech and data collection company. Delvinia is offering free access to the survey data, as a giveback “to help mental health professionals get ahead of what’s coming,” the company says.
Fear spread in early March when the World Health Organization initially pegged the death rate of COVID-19 at 3.4 per cent. This week, the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s “best estimate” put the overall death rate at 0.4 per cent for those who show symptoms, while the agency estimates 35 per cent of infected people never develop symptoms. While the disease has massacred nursing homes, Dr. John P. A.
It may be the case that people who were already anxious are just feeling a heightened sense of it. “We don’t really know, especially because we don’t have that comparator to say, this is how many would be experiencing lifetime anxiety prior to the pandemic,” said CAMH scientist Tara Elton-Marshall. “But it’s important for people to understand that if you are experiencing those symptoms, you’re not alone. This is an unprecedented time.
And home isn’t always a safe space. “We’re seeing an increase in domestic abuse,” Taylor says. Kids Help Phone, a national youth support service, has reported more than 50 per cent increases in texts and calls. Fear and panic can spread, too, Veissière says, but so can comfort, reassurance, feelings of safety, feeling of “effervescence” — like the Woodstock-level gatherings in Toronto parks. “Just the simple act of being able to share food and stories with your friends has become very special.” It’s an example of positive affect, he says, the feeling that things are going to be okay.
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