{"id":922,"date":"2021-09-24T13:05:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T13:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/displacement.sps.ed.ac.uk\/?p=922"},"modified":"2021-09-24T13:07:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T13:07:40","slug":"behind-the-masks-mental-health-marginalisation-and-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/displacement.sps.ed.ac.uk\/so\/2021\/09\/24\/behind-the-masks-mental-health-marginalisation-and-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Masks: Mental Health, Marginalisation and COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Rebecca Walker and Jo Vearey discuss how COVID-19 is impacting mental health and existing inequalities in South Africa.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As the numbers of people vaccinated against Covid-19 in high-income countries increase and lockdown restrictions on movement, travel and social interaction relax, just how far South Africa and many other low and middle-income countries are being left-behind is increasingly realised. By definition, a pandemic is global, and an international, justice-driven public health response is needed. Yet awareness of the clear gaps in our response to the pandemic only increases distress and a sense of despair in a country that is already fragile and wounded. Questions about how people can deal with so much loss of life; of livelihoods; of routine; of safety; of social contact and, for many the last threads of security frame many national and local conversations.<\/p>\n<p>In countries like South Africa \u2013 still caught in the third wave \u2013 concerns about the extent of the mental, emotional and psychological distress are heightened by the absence of a tangible \u2018end date\u2019 to the pandemic. While the vaccine rollout has recently been stepped up and, at the time of writing approximately<a href=\"https:\/\/mediahack.co.za\/datastories\/coronavirus\/dashboard\/\"> 7%<\/a> of the adult population have been vaccinated, this remains inadequate, particularly given the extent of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2021-08-16-vaccine-hesitancy-no-government-failure\/\">vaccine hesitancy <\/a>and failures to clearly address the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2021-07-26-leave-no-one-behind-we-must-urgently-address-vaccination-of-undocumented-migrants-and-asylum-seekers\/\">challenges of those without documents to access the vaccine<\/a>. Yet with the increasing recognition that life has fundamentally changed in many ways people still want \u2013 and need \u2013 to be able to talk about a time \u2018after Covid-19\u2019 and, behind the masks, the grief, anxiety, fear and frustrations that result from living through a pandemic continue to grow.<\/p>\n<p>The full article is available <a href=\"https:\/\/thepolyphony.org\/2021\/09\/21\/behind-the-masks-mental-health-and-marginalisation-covid-19\/\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Image credit: Senzo Shabangu @senza_shabangu<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Post by DiSoCO Co-Investigator Jo Vearey and Research Fellow Rebecca Walker based at the University of the Witwatersrand.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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