Mental Health care during COVID-19

With COVID-19, we are all likely to experience great hardships:  social isolation, cramped living quarters, severe financial problems, daily anxiety about going outside, difficulties with simple activities such as getting groceries or basic supplies, and of course the awful horror when we learn about what is going on elsewhere.  "Elsewhere" for now may be an abstraction about some city far away, but at some point "elsewhere" will get closer to home, to our families, to our loved ones. 

Symptoms of all mental illnesses have a high chance of becoming more severe.  

What can we do?  

I don't have the answers.  I'm scared myself.  

But here are some reminders about the basics: 

1) to the best of your ability, eat well, sleep well, and get some exercise, every day.  Try to have a schedule about doing these things.  It may not be possible to get these things done.  Normal sleep may be impossible due to anxiety.  But try.  Have a schedule.  Do your best.  Avoid things that make you worse emotionally, such as too much caffeine, too much junk food, etc.  

2) Try to focus on something else other than COVID news.  Read.  Study.  Clean.  Play video games.  

3) Have social contact.  This would have to be on the phone, by email, by Skype or FaceTime.  Or you could talk or sing to people who live nearby, as they are doing in Italy.  

4) Plan for what you'd like to do when this is all over.  It could be brief, over months, but maybe this could drag on for a year or more.  Think of the great celebration we will have then.