2023-04-20 02:30:00
In Venezuela, the pandemic caused by the COVID-19mishandled by falsifying the data and politically manipulating the information, together with the economic, social and political situation due to the crisis we have been suffering for years, caused all kinds of havoc in the lives of its inhabitants and a complex humanitarian emergency.
We are talking about the problem of income poverty that affects 94% of the population and the extreme poverty to 76%; child malnutrition and adult malnutrition, which 54% of the population suffers, the dramatic increase in maternal and infant mortality, the neglect of health due to the alarming deterioration of the health system and access to medicines in the country and its particular impact on people suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes, kidney failure, cancer or HIV-AIDS.
In this sense, Venezuelans have been facing for years a context of economic precariousnesshyperinflation, job instability, increase in violence, deterioration of basic services, health and education, which compromises their living conditions.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
Of course, a minimum salary average between 6.2 and 25 dollars a month for the majority of workers, pensioners and retirees, plus the general state of existing personal and legal insecurity, do not help at all.
Between the collapse of support centers and the dismissal of symptoms, the Venezuelan mental health It is one of the most underestimated and almost invisible elements of the crisis by the media and national and international public opinion, despite the fact that specialists have warned about its magnitude and significance.
In terms of the causes of the deterioration of physical and mental health, it should be noted that the effects of the socioeconomic and political crisis that began to worsen since 2017, was added to the confinement due to the pandemic, the work overload for those who they should have assumed the maintenance of the home economythe abandonment of women’s jobs, the closure of schools and universities, the physical consequences of those who were infected and the mourning of families for the loss of those who did not overcome it.
Then came the immigration crisis which is still maintained, with the painful effect of the disintegration of families, and the abandonment of older people who could not migrate.
In this context, it was to be expected capacity decline of all to face particular situations and the difficulties of a permanent crisis and the perception of precariousness in all senses, and that today we feel overwhelmed by stress.
The first evidence of the deterioration of the mental health of Venezuelans was the increase in psychological consultations (435% in the last two years), due to depression, anxiety, panic attacks, chronic stress, anger attacks, sleep disorders and feelings of loneliness, mostly in women and young people, as reported by specialized institutions.
With regard to the greatest effects on women, it must be said that they are due to the fact that the responsibilities of caring for the home still fall on them, increased by the closure of schools or the presence of sick family members.
Also that they remain financially disadvantaged due to lower wages, fewer savings and less secure employment than their male counterparts, and to top it off, they are also more likely to be victims of domestic violence, the prevalence of which in Venezuela continues to rise to date.
Regarding young people, the confinement and collapse of the educational system, together with the noticeable decrease in opportunities of healthy entertainment, as well as the uncertainty about their immediate future, have negatively contributed to their mental health and influence their willingness to migrate.
In the midst of this already quite complex picture, the suicide statistics.
The Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), for example, counted 94 suicides during the first semester of 2020. His studies determined that more than 35% of them had causes related to the situation the country is going through.
A narrative journalism communication platform (Historias que Laten), which made a special called “Suicide Stories”, concluded that, from 2015 to the first semester of 2021, 9,630 people took their lives in Venezuela and that only in 2020, some 23,000 people attempted suicide. These numbers continue to rise.
More recently, the presence of new psychological disorders such as Burnout o «burnout syndrome», which is a special type of work-related stress that consists of a state of physical or emotional exhaustion, which also implies a lack of a sense of achievement and a loss of personal identity.
We also have incidence of Stresslaxinga relatively new term, which joins the words in English stress (stress) and relaxation (relaxing), and which consists of a certain inability to relax that makes us feel bad when we try to disconnect from what overwhelms or stresses us.
In both cases, the incidence is higher among those who were forced to assume forms of work at a distance and over the Internet, given the loss or absence of face-to-face work.
Finally, a study carried out by the Andres Bello Catholic University (UCAB) in January of this year, called Psicodata, revealed that 90% of Venezuelans live worried about the situation in the country, and that 40% state that their spirits have deteriorated; it also shows that the dire economic situation is the main cause of stress, especially for the poor, who represent 81.5% of the population.
So, as a consequence of the economic, social, political and ethical crisis that we are suffering; the absence of public health policies and infrastructures aimed at protecting mental health; difficult access to free or low-cost psychological or psychiatric care services; and, finally, the popular prejudice that links the search for psychological help with the condition of “being crazy”, Venezuela has been turned into a particularly hostile and difficult psychosocial environment, which increases the probability of suffering physical and psychological health problems.
As the popular saying goes: “We were eight and our grandmother gave birth.”
- Alex Fergusson es author of 19 books, professor-researcher at the Central University of Venezuela and consultant in Conflict Management and Negotiation
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