John Moe:  writer, humorist, and National Public Radio host has recently released his memoir “The Hilarious World of Depression.”  The book, which was developed from his podcast series of the same name, is based on his own experience with clinical depression.  Both the book and the series use funny, moving, and candid conversations to provide insight into how to approach and manage mental illness.  This is the second in a series of blog post articles that share his perspective on mental health.

 “A good friend of mine described the pandemic as being very familiar ground for people with depression because you have this mortal dread of something intangible or at least invisible to the naked eye.  It’s gloomy, and the road forward is uncertain, probably bad.”

John Moe knows firsthand the effects of depression on daily life having experienced symptoms since childhood, and finally being diagnosed with major depressive disorder in 2006.

 “In a lot of ways people who have dealt with depression, or anxiety, were a little bit better prepared for the pandemic because we have coping mechanisms.  They may just help you get through the day, but sometimes that’s enough.”

John describes the effects of the pandemic on mental health in our country as both familiar and disconcerting.

“The pandemic is a perfect storm.  I mean you’ve got health anxiety, economic anxiety, and financial anxiety.  People are worried about losing their homes, about opportunities shutting down.  There’s this immense feeling of we don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to happen next.”

The percentage of people reporting symptoms of depression, and a disorder level of depression is way up

The percentage of people reporting symptoms of depression, and a disorder level of depression is way up, John emphasizes, and this does not show signs of decreasing anytime soon.

“There’s this concept I read about called the bereavement multiplier, where for every person who dies of COVID-19, there are on average nine people in their immediate family who will be grieving. If you take that number and multiply it times the number of people who have died, you have millions of people feeling stuck, missing work, and not functioning at their best.”

John thinks that trauma, which is “completely under-recognized as a source for mental disorders” explains the rapidly increasing numbers of people experiencing mental illness during the pandemic. He believes this influx of new cases will put a tremendous strain on a mental health care system that is already ill-equipped to receive them and tells us that “there are parts of the country where there’s barely any health professionals for the number of people who live there.”

Along with bringing much-needed awareness to this problem, John feels that some sort of system needs to be put into place to effectively treat the growing amount of people experiencing mental illness. He feels this can only happen when there is proper representation of mental health professionals on the White House Council on Coronavirus.

“There’s a lot of expertise on this council, but nobody exclusively from the world of mental health.  That’s something to contact your senators and representatives about.”

Until this change occurs, John encourages people with mental illness to continue to reach out for help, even from their general practitioner (GP), to learn more about how to manage their symptoms before they get worse.  He also promotes the idea of being kind to one another.

“Our country struggles with basic civility and kindness to other people.  It’s important to be kind because everybody you know is in some sort of struggle.”

HealthPartners’ Make it OK initiative has been a valuable partner in John’s efforts to bring awareness and provide resources to people experiencing mental illness.