The crisis may be passing, but there’s no return to the ‘normal’ of 2019 – and we’re no longer the same people we were
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.
Steven Taylor is a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and author of The Psychology of Pandemics
