World Mental Health Day: More are seeking help

ARLINGTON -- Some BLUEbike users in Greater Boston may have been baffled Monday to find their rentals were free.

It was how BlueCross/BlueShield marked World Mental Health Day -- the insurer touting the mood-elevating benefits of exercise, in general and bike-riding, in particular.

A rider named Max would attest to that. He was in the midst of covering the entire Minuteman Bikeway from Alewife Station through Lexington.

“It breaks the day-to-day trend of just staying home all day,” he said. “And I can just see the outdoors, breathe some fresh air, see some people -- even some dogs.”

In fact, along the way, Max met up with a biker he’d never met and they rode the trail together.

BlueCross/Blue Shield cited studies showing biking not only eased anxiety -- but also increased blood flow to the brain and other parts of the body -- and improved sleep.

“Very unnatural several years that we’ve all been through,” said Fernando Rodriguez-Villa, who was biking and running the trail. “A lot of us had devices to spend a lot of our time with. Getting a chance to be outside and do something that’s relatively low tech is probably a good thing.”

For the last three years, World Mental Health Day has fallen at a precarious time for anxiety levels, as winter Covid surges usually begin about now. And there’s no doubt the ongoing pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, said Psychiatrist Ashwini Nadkarni, MD, Associate Vice-Chair of Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Medical Director of Brigham Psychiatric Specialties.

“In the first year (of the pandemic) global prevalence rates of anxiety and depression went up nearly 25 percent,” Nadkarni said. “That makes sense, given the unprecedented stress we’ve experienced.”

That same year, 2020, the National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that one in five American adults and one in six children experienced some kind of mental disorder. Likely, those numbers have gotten worse.

“People are coming in talking about the social isolation, distancing rules, constraints on their ability to work, financial stressors, fear of infection, suffering, death that they’ve experienced whether it’s with friends, families, communities,” said Nadkarni. “And that impact of that grief and bereavement has been truly extensive.”

And then there are the direct effects of Covid-19 to consider, Nadkarni said.

“Up to a year out, we’re seeing patients who have neurocognitive symptoms such as an impact on their memory, their concentration, their ability to attend to different tasks, their processing speed,” she said.

One positive from the pandemic: more Americans seem to be seeking out help for mental issues -- and that’s helping to minimize the traditional stigma associated with these illnesses.

But some are ineffectively (and even harmfully) self-medicating -- with some studies showing alcohol consumption is up.

“Heavy drinking has increased among women and again that may be a reflection of all the different strains and stressors that have been there among women,” Nadkarni said. “Sadness is a very normal emotion. But when that sadness is keeping you from doing things you ordinarily love to do -- talking to friends you care about, keeping you from focusing at work or enjoying time spent with your kids... that’s when it’s time to reach out.”

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