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The Pandemic is Improving. Why Are You Still So Miserable?
It’s okay if your mental health is not bouncing back. Here’s why.
At first, Lindsay Pearson felt hopeful. She was getting the Covid-19 vaccine, and case rates around the country were going down. The pandemic was, by many accounts, finally getting under control. Like many of us, Pearson, 23, who lives in Bakersfield, California, has had a miserable year — she has struggled with mental health problems her entire life, but being unable to work as an actress, her main creative and social outlet, made things so much worse. After Pearson got her first jab, she did feel some relief — until, suddenly, she didn’t. Her depression began to bear down on her harder than it had before. “It’s been a downward spiral,” she says. “I can’t help but feel a pervading sense of hopelessness all the time.”
Much of the rhetoric surrounding the pandemic right now is positive — as it should be. More than 62 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against the deadly virus we were all susceptible to one year ago. Although cases are once again rising, one-fifth as many people are dying from Covid-19 as they were in late January, one-third as many are hospitalized, and unemployment claims have fallen to a new pandemic low. Yet even so, many Americans aren’t feeling the relief they expected. In fact…
