The pandemic changed everything about our lives: how we worked, socialised, travelled. Dealing with so many changes at once was a mental challenge for us all. As Covid-19 fizzles out, and things go back to “normal”, some of these pressures will ease as life becomes more recognisable. But the end of a pandemic will require an adjustment, just as the beginning did.
For a start, we are not entering the same “normal” that we left – and we are not the same people we were then. Some of us will face lingering mental health problems, including those who have developed severe, chronic grief over the loss of loved ones, or people who have developed post-traumatic stress disorder because of experiences with the disease.
A new vocabulary of psychological terms has blossomed during the pandemic. “Cave syndrome”, a fear of going out among the vaccinated; “coronaphobia”, an intense fear of catching the virus; and “Covid stress syndrome”. These neologisms provided labels that helped people to better understand their experiences and the experiences of those around them. But the terms, having served their purpose, will probably fall by the wayside once the pandemic is over, to be replaced with more conventional psychiatric labels – “agoraphobia’”, “adjustment disorder” – as described in the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, DSM-5-TR, due to be released next month.
Meanwhile, pandemics typically do not have clean, neat endings. Restrictions in England might be ending on Thursday, but it is unlikely that you’ll wake up one morning to news reports declaring that Covid has gone. It may take months or longer for some people to reassure themselves that the pandemic is truly over, and even longer for some to relax into activities that were fraught with risk for two years.
Many may suspect that the “end” of the pandemic is more a political construct than anything else. As pandemic fatigue set in, people became increasingly tired and frustrated with government restrictions on travel and socialisation. The growing weariness with Covid motivates some people, especially those who see the threat as overblown, to protest against remaining restrictions. Governments initially clamped down on people flouting the rules, but it gets hard to enforce these rules with good conscience when it turns out so many politicians are openly ignoring them, such as by holding illicit garden parties. Community-wide fatigue with Covid and rising protests are likely to be factors fuelling government decisions to lift restrictions and allow people to live their lives as before.
As a result of all this, the “roaring 20s” scenario – a promised post-pandemic party time – seems increasingly unlikely. As the current pandemic gradually fizzles out, people will resume their previous lives.
There will, perhaps, be celebrations of some kind when the WHO declares that we have entered a vaguely defined “post-pandemic period”, which is how it described the end of the 2009 swine flu pandemic. However, the WHO has mistakenly declared outbreaks to be over in the past: for example, in 2015 and 2016 it wrongly declared that an Ebola outbreak was over, finally getting it right the third time. For Covid, we can look forward to entering a “post-pandemic period”, with all the uncertainty the term implies. Covid will still be circulating in communities and people will have to decide for themselves, based on their risk tolerance, whether they should wear masks, go to crowded social gatherings and so on. This uncertain status quo will take some adjustment, just as it did during the protracted end of past pandemics such as the 1889 Russian flu and 1918 Spanish flu.
In the months and years ahead, the emotional legacy of Covid will become clearer. The mental health toll may not be apparent for some years. Nevertheless, the research strongly suggests that most people will bounce back, and some will grow as human beings – a phenomenon known as post-traumatic growth. This involves growing through adversity as people learn to become more resilient and develop a deeper appreciation for everyday things in life, such as our connections to friends and family.
The pandemic has also taught us the importance of developing resilience – the ability to manage the stressors, large and small, in our lives. Resilience may be one positive legacy of a very tough couple of years.
Steven Taylor is a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and author of The Psychology of Pandemics
