How to Look After Your Mental Health: 5 Best Tips and Tricks During Quarantine

We’ve compiled the best practices to support you during the quarantine and help you regain and maintain normalcy!

Protecting your mental health is one of the most important things you can do in your daily life, especially given the current quarantine which has disrupted many of our daily routines, physically separated us from our family & friends, and thrown the economy into a tailspin. Everyone’s circumstance is different but the isolation, unemployment, financial losses, uncertainty, and fear of getting the virus, among many other things is causing many people’s mental health to suffer. It is important to recognize that this is can impact any of us whether you have experienced a mental health concern in the past or not.

It is important to be aware of and look for signs of poor mental health in ourselves and others. Signs of poor mental health can include:

• Excessive concerns for your own health and anxiety, ruminating thoughts or worry, and or loss of motivation
• Changes in eating habits, including eating because of boredom or loss of appetite
• Having trouble or disrupted sleeping patterns, like falling at odd times, staying asleep way past the time you normally get up, or repeatedly having nightmares

It is important to note that worrying in and of itself isn’t bad and that we all do it from time to time. Worry, stress, and anxiety are our bodies way of communicating to us that it believes there is potential danger. Whether these protective functions are healthy or detrimental to us depends on how we respond to them. For example, when the stress and worry motivates people to wear masks and take additional precautions to prevent themselves and others from getting sick it is a productive response. However, when stress and anxiety cause a cycle of obsession, ruminating thoughts, negative what-if thinking, and behavior that is more harmful than helpful, it is no longer effective or healthy. It is imperative that as a society we take precautions to protect ourselves and our loved ones, while remembering to be mindful of our mental health.