The mental health folks brace themselves for Christmas because any changing family / household metrics put a strain on relationships. And they're bracing themselves for a veritable tsunami of issues in coming weeks as people adjust to a changed way of life. HM Government has put out
Guidance for the public on the mental health and wellbeing aspects of coronavirus (COVID-19) - a substantial document of 12 pages (if you were to print it out) of pure text - no graphics.
I'll quote the "management overview" from the start of the document.
The coronavirus (COVID19) outbreak is going to have an impact on everyone’s daily lives, as the government and the NHS take necessary steps to manage the outbreak, reduce transmission and treat those who need medical attention.
It may be difficult, but by following guidance on social distancing, or staying at home, you are helping to protect yourself, your family, the NHS and your community.
During this time, you may be bored, frustrated or lonely. You may also feel low, worried, anxious, or be concerned about your health or that of those close to you. Everyone reacts differently to events and changes in the way that we think, feel and behave vary between different people and over time. It’s important that you take care of your mind as well as your body and to get further support if you need it.
If "taking care of your mind" involves posting, messaging, chatting, writing on the forum or with members, please go ahead - subject still (I'm afraid) to the forum agreement and guidance posted at
http://www.passenger.chat/1761 but viewed with generosity of positive spirit in the world situation we find ourselves in.
Lisa and I were "semi-retired" when the shutdown struck, and we now describe ourselves as "retired". I have - utterly and right to the end - enjoyed training people in open source programming, but notes get out of date and technology moves on. Programming has actually been the eye of the storm of technological development; understandable, as coding is expensive and people who pay for it want something that lasts and can be reused through multiple generations of hardware and systems. However, even code and samples age, and facilities get added which replace complex element that need training with simple ones that are trivial to use (and, it must be admitted, add new complexities).
Declared "retired" does not stop me writing and maintaining code - and indeed I'm still keeping my hand in with supporting both this forum and some other 'interest' web sites. And I've also got remaining contract work looking our for systems behind - back to the subject line of this post - mental health support services. Yesterday, I was working on immediate issues on their server and talking with the boss / my main contact - the software is running clean and able to cope with changing requirements, but we wanted to be sure of that. Good news is that there has
not been a spike in referrals - though we are asking "is there one in the pipeline?". I suspect that the metrics will change rather than change by an order of magnitude - for sure, face-to-face has dropped, remote-electronic has ramped up.
