Mental Health Matters
Welcome to May—and to Mental Health Awareness Month.
First, thank you so much for the warm wishes on my new podcast called Beyond the Prescription! You were all so excited by the trailer, I have a special treat for you.
To officially launch the podcast tomorrow, May 3, we’ll be releasing not one but our first two episodes. So make sure you’re subscribed on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts! And get ready for two very special conversations this week: one with Scott Stossel, the national editor of The Atlantic and best-selling author, about his excruciating battle with anxiety; the other with Jennifer Sey, Emmy-award winning producer and former U.S. national gymnastics champ, about childhood abuse and post-traumatic growth.
I’m thrilled for you to join me and my incredible guests every Tuesday as we dig deep into their lives to understand their often unpredictable career trajectory—and how wrestling with their health (mental, physical, or behavioral) has played a key role.
My intention with the podcast is much the same as with this newsletter since March 2020: to help provide insight and take-home lessons about navigating struggle and optimizing our everyday mental and physical health in tandem.
OK, sales pitch OVER! And now for the regularly scheduled newsletter…
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Let’s pause and ask ourselves for a quick minute: What does it even mean to be healthy?
As I said to one of my longstanding patients this morning at her check-up: To me, health is about more than the sum total of your lab results; it’s the 364 days a year you’re not in my office. It’s about more than the absence of disease. It’s about treating root causes and not merely symptoms. It’s about connecting the dots between our medical issues and our everyday thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so that we’re armed with tools to live longer and better. It’s about seeking trusted advisors. It’s about caring for our mental and physical health together.
What does health mean to you?
For the last 26 months, it’s been about avoiding COVID-19. We have been laser focused on it for good reason!
We've also accumulated vast amounts of knowledge and real-world data about:
how the virus spreads (i.e. in the air; not on surfaces or outdoors)
vaccine safety and effectiveness (i.e. excellent and excellent)
the absence of evidence for boosting young people (once considered misinformation for even discussing!)
who exactly is at highest risk for poor outcomes from COVID (i.e. older, obese, immunocompromised, and otherwise high-risk patients)
how to best protect the vulnerable (i.e. vaccinate! ventilate! test if sick! Paxlovid and Evusheld as needed!)
just how well the vaccines protect many immunocompromised people are protected against serious disease (Ben Mazer wrote a wonderful article for The Atlantic about this.)
testing and isolation (i.e. rapid antigen testing as “contagiousness” testing)
masks (i.e. cloth masks are pretty useless; high-grade masks are best and particularly important for high-risk and unvaccinated adults)
the unintended consequences of mitigation measures (i.e. too numerous to count, eg. mental health crisis in kids and adolescents)
Now that deaths and hospitalization rates are low, it’s time to double down on strategies that work—and to lift mitigation measures that do more harm than good.
What does that actually mean? Do we throw in the towel and let it rip? Do we decide to not care about how our actions affect other people? Do we declare that COVID is “over”?
Hardly.
BA.2 is still everywhere. Lots of my patients have it right now. We’re approaching the grim milestone of one million deaths. We’re witnessing ongoing destruction from the virus itself and from the collateral damage to our economy, political infrastructure, and social fabric. We are not done.
In fact, we’ll never be done protecting our most vulnerable patients and populations—that’s why we must continue to manage both our risk for COVID-19 and our expectations of life with this endemic virus.
We need to help our unvaccinated friends and family get vaccinated. We still need to stay home and get tested if we’re sick. We still need to protect the vulnerable. We still need to recognize our individual medical susceptibilities—and work on improving the variables that are under our control.
It’s also time to recognize our broad human needs beyond preventing COVID. The WHO constitution states that "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." I couldn’t agree more.
COVID is only one of many health concerns for my patients. My patients’ diabetes, dementia, hypertension, and breast cancer didn’t magically disappear when COVID hit the scene. In fact, many patients’ underlying health conditions have flared as a result of relative inactivity, missed cancer screenings, stress, and wobbly relationships with food and with alcohol, among other things. This spring I’m seeing many more cases of remorse about haphazard pandemic habits than I am of severe COVID-19.
The upshot?
We can start to zoom out on our health and reclaim important parts of our lives that we’ve let drift away.
This won’t be easy. We’re still in the throes of ongoing trauma. We have lost loved ones, jobs, relationships, and the contours of regular life. Even if COVID was declared “over” today, we cannot expect ourselves to bounce back overnight—or even to want our old “normal” back.
But we can start by reflecting on what we need to be healthy. We can start by better meeting our basic biological needs: sleep, regular movement, nutritious meals, and social connections. When our brains and bodies are rested, fed, active and connected, we’re better equipped to manage the stress of everyday life.
This is the very essence of Beyond the Prescription. For the trailer, click here. Listen and subscribe today. And if you like what you hear, please share it widely!
I will see you next week. Until then, be well.