Health Advisories

[jo]

Hugh Jackman will be part of MPTF Fundraiser --


www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat_new/d.php?id=2487326

“WE ALL PLAY OUR PART: A BENEFIT FOR MPTF”

TO TAKE PLACE ON FRIDAY, MAY 15

Fundraising Event Will Be Hosted by Yvette Nicole Brown and Tom Bergeron


Additional Performances and Appearances from George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Jodie Foster, Brad Paisley & Kimberly Williams Paisley, Kris Jenner, Ray Romano, Brad Garrett, Wanda Sykes, Ken Jeong, Rachel Platten, Susanna Hoffs & Jay Roach, Jay Ellis, Leslie Odom Jr., Jeffrey Katzenberg, and More!

MPTF (Motion Picture & Television Fund) announced today that it will host a one-night-only fundraiser to benefit their COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund, providing support for entertainment industry workers, particularly those who work behind-the-scenes across film and television, who need it most during this pandemic. The virtual event, “We All Play Our Part: A Benefit for MPTF” will broadcast on MPTF’s YouTube page on Friday, May 15 at 6pm PDT, and will be hosted by longtime MPTF advocates and supporters Yvette Nicole Brown and Tom Bergeron.

More...

Link to YouTube which will broadcast the event --

www.youtube.com/channel/UCqOmF0Wx-98bPUtQNaAImvw

[mamaleh]

HJ is listed as "appearing" but not as one of the performers. With dozens of top stars from various media, I imagine that hour will fly by.

Ellen

[jo]

These Are the Things That New Yorkers Achingly Miss

The crowds, the big-ticket blockbusters that were a subway ride away, “just everything”: What’s gone has transformed the city

Before the pandemic, a hot dog from a cart outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a quintessential New York meal.
Credit...
Andrew Seng for The New York Times

By Michael Wilson
May 9, 2020


To hop on the train, any train, earbuds intact, alone in the crowd on the way somewhere else. To walk out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhausted as if from a march. The sweet-potato fries and a beer at Tubby Hook Tavern in Inwood; the coffee-cart guy on West 40th Street who remembers you take it black.

Sunday Mass and the bakery after. Seeing old friends in the synagogue. Play dates. The High Line. Hugs.

Ask New Yorkers what they miss most, nearly two months into isolation. To hear their answers is to witness a perfect version of the city built from the ground up, a place refracted through a lens of loss, where the best parts are huge and the annoyances become all but invisible. The cheap seats in the outfield, the shouting to be heard at happy hour. Meeting cousins with a soccer ball in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The din of the theater as you scan the Playbill before the lights go down.

“I miss my gym equipment,” said Barbara James of Brooklyn Heights.
“The lamb over rice from the food cart by my office, at Seventh and 49th,” said Chris Meredith of East Harlem


“Just everything,” sighed a police chofficer sitting behind the wheel of his vehicle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last week. “I miss everything.”


Lori Smith, visiting Madison Square Park on Friday, misses riding the ferry to work with her fellow Staten Islanders. “I always enjoyed my commute,” she said. “I never saw it as a drudge.”


In normal times, in Big Apple, city-that-never-sleeps times, people flew in from all over the world to see and do the things locals could do on any given Tuesday. To have that access cut off for so long, with its return yet unforeseen, is to transform what it means to be a New Yorker.

The lockdown has made everyone into tourists, looking at old photos and Instagram and Facebook to find the city that was once outside the door.

“More than anything else, I miss the variety of New York,” said Eddie Antar, 58, of the Inwood section of Manhattan.


He and his wife, on weekends, used to take a train downtown, destination unknown. Maybe hop off at 125th Street and walk down through Central Park to Columbus Circle, and farther south, ending up in Lower Manhattan and hungry for dinner — a journey that now feels as exotic as a safari.


“Everything we do now is so localized, as opposed to having some sort of variety,” Mr. Antar said. “Even on an evolutionary level, we’re migrating creatures; we’re wanderers. It’s part of our DNA to wake up the senses with something new.”



It is a strange feeling to be stuck in a city and to miss it at the same time. Liz Maggiotto of Inwood misses her yoga studio and the neighborhood bar Tubby Hook Tavern


Tommy O’Neil, 24, an elementary school science teacher from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, said he longed for those kinds of days — the aimless walks, each neighborhood a world-class backdrop to one’s inner thoughts. “As much as we complain all day, every day, about how many people live here, I miss busy sidewalks in the East Village,” he said. “The busy walks around Central Park. I miss the music.”

All over the country and the world, people long for what has been taken by the pandemic — some of it universal, some of it specific to that place, that city, that town. But the loss can feel almost impossibly strong in New York, in that what’s gone are the very reasons so many arrived. For the race, the drive toward the top of one’s profession. For the crowds. These are the things that make the rest worth it — the maddening rents, the subway delays. And, yes, the crowds.

To yearn for a bygone era that was vibrant as recently as 10 weeks ago still packs a psychic whiplash. “It suddenly has been ripped out from under all of us collectively, without even the chance to say goodbye,” wrote Kathryn Ghotbi, 26, a New Yorker of seven years, in response to a callout to New York Times readers about their state of mind. “It’s a singularly strange feeling to desperately miss the place you are.”

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She sought for something specific: “The exhaustion of spending an entire day at a museum, and afterward, collapsing into a plate of delicious food at a local restaurant.”

Other losses are much more personal. On Staten Island, Lori Smith, 57, has spent the last month missing her older brother, Tommy Smith III, who died on April 10 from the coronavirus. They grew up visiting Manhattan for its record stores and music, which planted in her a deep connection to the city.

I always enjoyed my commute. I never saw it as a drudge,” said Ms. Smith, who took the Staten Island Ferry to work at the American Kennel Club near Grand Central Terminal. “I loved the city — I love it, I love it. Even in the dead of winter, I see the little rays of light sparkling off the water. I enjoy those 22 minutes. They say 25, but it’s actually 22.”

She is a cheery street-level ambassador, happy to give directions to a tourist. “There are people in this world who save all their money to come here on vacation,” she said. “To see our city.”

There are things that people do not long for. Heavy traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Or on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Or anywhere — traffic all but gone, making a drive in the city feel like something from an old movie or a video game.

People relished the absence of other moments from the old life. Mr. Meredith, with the office near the food cart, quickly put a name to what he does not miss: well-meaning strangers.


There are aspects of city life that New Yorkers do not miss. For Chris Meredith, who is blind, it is strangers too eager to give him help he does not need.



“I’m completely blind,” he wrote. “One of the problems I face during morning and evening commutes is the barrage of people who presume to be ‘helping’ me by grabbing me by whatever limb is handy,” or even his cane, “and dragging me where they think I need to go.” The lack of that has been refreshing.

“I miss New York, though,” he said.
To miss New York is to yearn for the big-ticket blockbusters that were just a subway ride away — the Yankees, the Mets, the season tickets that have been in the family longer than you have. Madison Square Garden, the marquees on Broadway. But it is also to miss the little corners its people find and hold close.

For Liz Maggiotto, 41, it’s Bread and Yoga, a favorite studio in Inwood. For Cydney Weisel, 26, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, it’s brunch with friends — wherever — and a weekly gathering to play the board game Betrayal Legacy.

For Yan Zheng, 52, who runs the Lucky Family Grocery in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, it’s the Blue Color Hair Salon two doors down. “You go and you don’t think about anything else,” she said, speaking Mandarin. “You just relax.” In Buddhism, she said, hair is called “three thousand troubles,” or “trouble silk,” and so a haircut “is like throwing away your troubles.”


Yan Zheng misses going to the Blue Color Hair Salon, near the grocery she runs in Sunset Park, Brooklyn: “You go and you don’t think about anything else.”


For Elizabeth Curtis Bergin, 31, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, it’s daily interactions, “the little exchanges with strangers when someone drops something on the street or you give up your seat on the train and feel, however briefly, connected,” she wrote.

Ms. Maggiotto, more than she misses her yoga studio, longs for the day when her 4-year-old daughter, Livia, can act like a child again.



“Yesterday, her best friend came to visit and say hi in front of our building, but both kids were just not interested,” she said last week. “Where usually we’d say, ‘Go play’ or ‘Say hi,’ and now we have to say, ‘Stay away’ — it’s just completely unnatural.”

And not only for children. Many people looked past the city’s polish and shine and said what they really wanted was something you once could get almost anywhere.

“I haven’t been hugged in months,” said Michelle Velasquez, 33, a personal trainer in Fort Lee, N.J. “I think about the people that are losing everyone, and I can’t imagine losing a loved one and no one’s going to hug you. Or, you’re in the hospital and you’re sick and no one is going to hug you. My birthday came and went during quarantine, I didn’t get a hug. Then, I had to put my cat of 15 years to sleep, I didn’t get a hug then. More and more I realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m a hugger.’”

Susane Colasanti, 47, a young-adult novelist in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, knows better than anyone what she yearns to see again.

“Myself,” she wrote. “I miss my normally positive attitude, my resilience, my determination to succeed.”

Ms. Smith, mourning her brother on Staten Island, takes comfort in thinking of her return to the ferry and the city she loves — an experience she is grateful to have savored long before it went away.

“I enjoyed it when I had it,” she said. “I knew it was special then.”
Reporting was contributed by Jo Corona, Lauren Hard, Derek M. Norman, Nate Schweber and Jeffrey E. Singer.


Michael Wilson has been a reporter and columnist at The Times since 2002, writing stories for the New York, National, International and Arts sections. @mwilsonnyt
A version of this article appears in print on May 10, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Deep Yearning For Hometown Lost to a Virus. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

After all, New York City is a village...and everyone misses the village life.

Even the curious tourists ( who always look up... vs ...the locals who always look down as they walk past the touristy visitors)

who come to visit this place bound by 2 rivers, with skyscraping towers of glass. steel and cement (art deco or modern glass cages, take your pick), disparate in places ( bright lights on marquees of the great white way...in contrast to the electronic once-called ticker tapes in that narrow street bounded by WALLs),

the swans gliding on the pond at Parc Central vs the ant-like throng of people hurrying to work destinations or to shopping sprees,

or going back in time... to the time of the dinosaurs or the glory of Roman & Greek marble statues or if your taste runs past the Monets to the modern art of Picasso & Warhol...or maybe even a little bohemian as you walk the leafy streets of the Village...

or simply buying a pretzel and a hot cup of coffee... perhaps going to where people are rushing thru pre-shows at Juniors or to the elegant settees of the French-sounding temples of cuisines

it is the hum of feet moving swiftly north or south... or the cabs going from east to west

the oncoming subway cars eerily looking as if they are crashing onto you as they arrive,

or the mad rush to LGA or JFK thru the traffic...



figuring out whether one has the courage to do pirouettes on skates at Rock Center... or simply taking the required selfie in front of Prometheus, with tree or no tree!



When oh when can us lowly tourists go back to the city that we also miss

the city that doesn't sleep …

King of the hill...top of the heap!

New York, New York!!


Jo

[jo]

At 1'53"

[jo]

This famous aria was used to be called "Nessun Dorma"




I can imagine Pavarotti laughing about it - this was his song! I had the pleasure of seeing him perform in Manila and he was very charming and humorous!

Jo

[jo]

On a more sober note, the Paris National Opera ( including all the artistic branches) offered this tribute and message of support to all FRONTLINERS, singing the original Nessun Dorma.





Translated by GOOGLE --

In this downtime of the shows at the Opéra national de Paris, members from the institution's three artistic bodies, the Orchestra, the Choirs and the Ballet wanted to thank in their own way all those who are today on the front line in the fight against the pandemic. These spontaneous initiatives are the result of their desire to express their deep gratitude and support to all those who work with dedication and courage to protect us.

[jo]

Hugh greets a health worker --

http://instagram.com/p/CANauWdDnBq

[njr]

This is a really good article:

www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Nancy

[hu4601]

May 15, 2020 11:22:32 GMT -5 njr said:

This is a really good article:

www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Nancy

  Agree. Thanks for posting Nancy.

[jo]

For the MPTF ( Motion Pictures and TV Fund) marathon to benefit the more needy members under this scenario --

[jo]

And for the Graduating Class of 2020 who have missed a memorable graduation moment --

http://instagram.com/p/CAPvF7JjyUN

[jo]

Re Hugh's Graduation Day message --

[ruby]

May 16, 2020 8:31:31 GMT -5 jo said:

Re Hugh's Graduation Day message --

The poster doesn’t realize how well aware Hugh is of the Sunscreen history- authored by a friend and colleague.

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/CAVExtLDogZ

[jo]

This is more looking at the long-term outlook for the USA in general on many aspects of daily life. These are mainly outlooks presented on different sectors from about 30 sources. If you wish to focus on the topics of interest to you, you can pick your choice(s) at the earliest part of the article.

www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/19/coronavirus-effect-economy-life-society-analysis-covid-135579

[jo]

www.breakingnews.ie/showbiz/hugh-jackman-and-julia-roberts-to-hand-over-social-accounts-to-health-experts-1000577.html

Hugh Jackman, Julia Roberts and Millie Bobby Brown are among the stars who will hand over their social media channels and access to their millions of followers to frontline workers and health and economic and experts.

They will take part in #passthemic from the ONE campaign, giving experts a platform to share their perspectives – grounded in data, science and facts – and talk about why they believe a global response to the current pandemic is crucial for eradicating coronavirus.


They will be joined by other stars including David Oyelowo, James McAvoy, Connie Britton, Penelope Cruz, Danai Gurira, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rita Wilson and Robin Wright for the initiative, and among the experts featured will be Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US.

Millie Bobby Brown will hand over her social accounts (Ian West/PA)

Also included will be Aya Chebbi, youth envoy for the African Union, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, former president of Liberia, Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa and Craig Spencer, director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Centre.

Roberts will be the first star to pass the mic, when she speaks to Dr Fauci on May 21.


Gayle Smith, president and CEO of ONE Campaign, said: “Beating the virus means listening to the experts and following the science, data and facts to get ahead of it.

“This impressive group of talent and experts from around the world will put a spotlight on the need for a global response to this pandemic.

“We need global cooperation and action to fight this pandemic – especially for the people, communities, and countries that are least able to withstand the shock. Because none of us are safe until all of us are safe.”

[jo]

NYTimes article on what the pandemic has impacted on so heavily in our lives --

A quandary is lurking at the heart of the efforts to revive the economy.

In recent decades, a growing share of job growth and gross domestic product has come from the business of getting people together — from college sports and music festivals like Coachella to ax-throwing bars and ice cream museums. Yet given the infectious nature of the coronavirus, these very events will be among the very last to return.


“Any place people want to gather is a place no one wants to be right now,” said Joe Pine, a co-author of “The Experience Economy.”

That bleak truth has profound implications for businesses large and small. And with most large-scale gatherings on hold for the foreseeable future, the dearth of live events is already taking a psychological toll, not only on those in the industry but on society at large.



“Human contact is really what our business is built on,” said Roland Swenson, chief executive of South by Southwest, the music, film and technology festival in Austin, Texas, which was canceled in March. “If that is lost, then the world will be a poorer place.”

The economy’s reliance on live events has been growing for years. When Disneyland opened in 1955, it sparked a boom in the theme park business. In recent decades, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Great Wolf Lodge water parks and more have emerged to compete for the attention — and money — of American families.

As live sports became lucrative television properties, leagues like the W.N.B.A. and Major League Soccer were born, expensive stadiums with state-of-the-art amenities were built and the sheer number of games grew. When the record business faltered, concerts became the profit centers for musical acts. Many media companies found that hosting conferences was more profitable than publishing magazines. Lately, escape rooms and pop-up experiences like the Color Factory and Candytopia have proliferated.

Even the boom in restaurants was about atmospherics as much as it was about food. Starbucks succeeded by creating not just a latte with a nice profit margin but a place outside the home and office where people wanted to linger.

“Surround coffee with an experience and you can charge $5 a cup,” Mr. Pine said.

The economic output associated with such diversions has ballooned. G.D.P. attributable to arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations and food services was nearly $1.6 trillion last year, up from $979 billion a decade ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.



All those new experiences created jobs, and over the same period, employment in the leisure and hospitality industries grew about 30 percent, reaching a high of nearly 17 million early this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As the domestic manufacturing industry waned, the businesses involved in bringing large groups of people together became ever more important to employment. And it was more than just hot dog vendors and parking lot attendants and security guards. Whole fields sprang up to support the business of live events, giving rise to a legion of event planners, lighting specialists and start-ups like Eventbrite, the online ticketing platform. There was even a new senior-level job at some corporations: head of experiences.



Yet it turns out that an economy that depends on gathering is especially vulnerable to disruption by a virus. In the last two months, the number of people employed in the leisure and hospitality industries has been roughly halved, accounting for about a quarter of the staggering job losses.

Movie theaters, sports venues and the vast majority of tourist attractions remain closed, and many may not open for months. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California suggested that fans might not be able to attend games in person until there is a vaccine, a breakthrough that isn’t expected until next year at the earliest.

“It’s difficult to imagine a stadium that’s filled until we have immunity and until we have a vaccine,” Mr. Newsom said. “There are conditions that persist in this state and this nation that make reopening very, very challenging.”

If his assessment is correct, that’s bad news for Major League Baseball ($10.7 billion in revenue last year), the National Basketball Association (about $8 billion in annual revenue) and the National Football League ($15 billion or more in annual revenue).



In states that have started to reopen, customers have not yet flocked back to establishments of the experience economy. When an Atlanta outpost of Bad Axe Throwing reopened late last month, hardly anyone showed up.

“That was the worst-case scenario, especially with all the marketing we did,” the company’s chief executive, Mario Zelaya, said. “The reopening weekend was a disaster. We had two customers all weekend.”

Companies that depend on live events, including Disney, which owns ESPN in addition to its theme parks, have seen their stocks fall more drastically than the broader markets. Shares in the three major cruise operators, Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian, are all down more than 67 percent this year.

And with mass unemployment sapping disposable income, most business travel being put on hold and tourism around the world having ground to a halt, the very viability of major airlines is in question. There are already questions about whether previously mundane occurrences — trade shows, industry conventions, conferences — will return to pre-pandemic levels when it is safe to travel again.



Any falloff in spending on these big-ticket items will be especially painful for cities that cater to tourists, such as Las Vegas, where crowded casinos and a plethora of live shows are the lifeblood of the economy. Gambling revenues at U.S. casinos reached an all-time high of $41.7 billion in 2018, according to the American Gaming Association.

But beyond the immediate hardships created by sweeping job losses and stagnant businesses, the standstill in gatherings is already having a deeper impact on the national psyche. The business of events, however commercial it might be, is also central to our identities. Getting together for birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese and bachelor parties at football games is how we make meaningful memories and define ourselves.

“If you go to the World Cup or a rock concert, it’s not just a commercial transaction,” said Priya Parker, author of “The Art of Gathering.” “It’s also an expression of identity.”

With the Major League Baseball season delayed, Dr. Anthony Fauci has waxed lyrical about his love of attending baseball games. Taylor Swift lamented her inability to play for live audiences during the pandemic, then announced that a show she recorded last year in Paris would be broadcast on national television.



Even President Trump is missing the crowds. “Hopefully our Country will soon mend,” he tweeted this month. “We are all missing our wonderful rallies, and many other things!”

Those in the events industry are left wondering what the future will hold.

Catherine Powell, head of experiences at Airbnb and a former Disney executive who oversaw theme parks, expressed optimism that when it was safe to gather again, the crowds would return.

“When lockdown lifts, there will be an incredible pent-up demand to want to connect,” she said.

There are early signs that might be true. Disney reopened its theme park in Shanghai recently, and quickly sold out of tickets. Yet admission was sharply limited to promote social distancing, and health precautions were ubiquitous. In Orlando, Fla., Disney and Universal are reopening some of their shopping areas, albeit with social distancing measures, a mask requirement and mandatory temperature checks at Universal.

As a result, the theme parks — once bustling profit engines for some of the biggest corporations — will be making a small fraction of the money they normally would, and the virus will never be far from visitors’ minds.

“From a travel industry and hospitality perspective, it will take a long time for things to return to normal,” Ms. Powell said. “If they ever return to normal.”

[jo]

A sensitive issue -- how to balance between minimizing health risk to recognizing that depression is beginning to affect many people under isolation/lockdown/quarantine!


www.msn.com/en-ph/health/mentalhealth/is-everyone-depressed/ar-BB14txcA?ocid=spartandhp

Is everyone depressed?

James Hamblin 9 hrs ago



(Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft News or Microsoft. Always check with your doctor before making any changes to your health routine.)


The word I keep hearing is numbness. Not necessarily a sickness, but feeling ill at ease. A sort of detachment or removal from reality. Deb Hawkins, a tech analyst in Michigan, describes the feeling of being stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic as “sleep-walking through my life” or “wading through a physical and mental quicksand.” Even though she has been living in what she calls an “introvert heaven” for the past two months—at home with her family, grateful they are in good health—her brain has dissented. “I feel like I have two modes,” Hawkins says: “barely functioning and boiling angry.”
Many people are even more deeply unmoored. Michael Falcone has run an acupuncture clinic for the past decade in Memphis, Tennessee. When he temporarily shut it down, the toll on his mental health was immediate. “I went into a pretty instant depression when I realized that my actual purpose was disintegrating,” he says. He began spending his days staring at his bookshelves. Falcone and I have exchanged emails for weeks now, and while his notes have been full of whimsical musings about adjusting to home life, one included a jarring line: “I’ve lost faith in myself. I don’t know if I can actually justify taking up space and resources.”

[Read: All the things we have to mourn now]

After I confirmed with Falcone that he had no intent to harm himself, I recommended that he seek medical help. But given the unprecedented circumstances we’re all in, I’m not sure whether I under- or overreacted—or even what “help” should look like, exactly. The pandemic is a moment of historic loss: unemployment, isolation, stasis, financial devastation, medical suffering, and hundreds of thousands of deaths globally. Suddenly droves of people are being thrown into a state like Falcone’s, feeling lost, hopeless—in his words, “depressed.”



Over the past month, Jennifer Leiferman, a researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health, has documented a tidal wave of depressive symptoms in the U.S. “The rates we’re seeing are just so much higher than normal,” she says. Leiferman’s team recently found that people in Colorado have, during the pandemic, been nine times more likely to report poor mental health than usual. About 23 percent of Coloradans have symptoms of clinical depression.

As a rough average, during pre-pandemic life, 5 to 7 percent of people met the criteria for a diagnosis of depression. Now, depending how you define the condition, orders of magnitude more people do. Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, extrapolates from a recent Lancet study in China to estimate that about 50 percent of the U.S. population is experiencing depressive symptoms. “We are witnessing the mental-health implications of massive disease and death,” he says. This has the effect of altering the social norm by which depression and other conditions are defined. Essentially, this throws off the whole definitional rubric.

Feelings of numbness, powerlessness, and hopelessness are now so common as to verge on being considered normal. But what we are seeing is far less likely an actual increase in a disease of the brain than a series of circumstances that is drawing out a similar neurochemical mix. This poses a diagnostic conundrum. Millions of people exhibiting signs of depression now have to discern ennui from temporary grieving from a medical condition. Those at home Googling symptoms need to know when to seek medical care, and when it’s safe to simply try baking more bread. Clinicians, meanwhile, need to decide how best to treat people with new or worsening symptoms: to diagnose millions of people with depression, or to more aggressively treat the social circumstances at the core of so much suffering.

Clearly articulating the meaning of medical depression is an existential challenge for the mental-health profession, and for a country that does not ensure its people health care. If we fail, the second wave of death from this pandemic will not be directly caused by the virus. It will take the people who suffered mentally from its reverberations.

Like COVID-19, depression takes erratic courses. Some predictable patterns exist, but no two cases are exactly alike. Depression can percolate for long periods then quickly become severe. Some people will barely notice it, and others will be tested in the extreme.




Andrew Solomon, the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, groups people based on four basic ways they’re responding to the current crisis. Two are straightforward. In the first are people who are drawing on huge stockpiles of resilience and truly doing okay. When you ask how they feel and they say “eh, fine,” they actually mean it. In the second, at the opposite end of things, are people who already have a clinical diagnosis of major depressive disorder or a persistent version known as dysthymia. Right now, their symptoms are at high risk of escalating. “They develop what some clinicians call ‘double depression,’ in which the underlying disorder coexists with a new layer of fear and sorrow,” Solomon says. Such people may need higher levels of medical care than usual, and may even need to be hospitalized.
The remaining two groups constitute more of a gray area. One group consists of the millions of people now experiencing depressive symptoms in a real way, but who nonetheless will return to their baseline eventually, as long as their symptoms are addressed. People in this group are in urgent need of basic interventions that help create routine and structure. Those might involve regularizing sleep and food, minimizing alcohol and other substances, exercising, avoiding obsessions with the news, and cutting back on other aimless habits that might be easier to moderate in normal times.

The fourth group encompasses people who are starting to develop clinical depression. More than simply a wellness regimen or a Zoom with friends, they need some type of formal medical intervention. They may have seemed fine and had adequate resilience in normal times, to deal with normal difficulties, but they’ve always had a propensity to develop overt depression. Solomon describes this group as “hanging on the precipice of what could be considered pathologic.” It can be especially precarious because people in this state—what some researchers refer to as “subclinical depression”—have not dealt with depression before, and may not have the capacity or resources to proactively seek treatment.

The earlier specific types of depression can be identified, the better people can be directed toward proper treatment. The mental-health system has always had barriers to identifying and helping people early—issues like access to care and stigma around seeking it out. In the midst of this pandemic, not only is the current population of psychiatrists insufficient to suddenly treat several times as many people as usual, but their basic capacities of diagnosis are also hindered by distance, volume, and confounding variables. “It takes considerable wisdom to delineate who has a clinical condition and needs medication and therapy, and who is just stressed out within the bounds of good mental health,” Solomon says. Clinicians train for years to understand that line, and placing people on one side or the other typically requires long interviews in which every element of a person’s affect is noted.




Even for people who manage to connect with clinicians, subtleties are difficult to read over video calls, says Meghan Jarvis, a trauma therapist who has been seeing a spectrum of reactions to the pandemic, including depression. Normally, Jarvis sends maybe one patient a year to the hospital for a pathologic response to trauma. Since March, she has already had to hospitalize four people. Typically, she explains, symptoms of depression are considered problematic if they last six weeks after a traumatic event. The precise length is arbitrary, but is meant to generally help distinguish depression from periods of grieving, such as after the death of a loved one. That distinction is largely useless in the pandemic. “I mean, we’re all going to have that,” Jarvis says, “because we’ve been in this mode for more than six weeks.”

Now Jarvis and others have to develop new thresholds. Just as, in the time of COVID-19, not everyone with a cough can go to the hospital, clinicians are working to identify and prioritize those who truly need in-person mental-health attention. Jennifer Rapke, the head of inpatient consultation at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital in New York, has seen a surge in teenagers reporting suicidal ideation and instances of self-harm, so she has been carefully turning away the less severe cases to make sure that inpatient facilities aren’t overwhelmed. “We’re only seeing people who absolutely need to be here,” she says. Meanwhile, those with milder, emerging cases are sometimes left in limbo. “The places we would normally send people, the things we would put in place to address the depression or the anxiety in early phases—they don’t exist or they’re unavailable,” Rapke says.

With less preventive and maintenance care accessible, people are more likely to come to hospitals in more severe states. During crises, extreme events like self-harm and suicide lag in time. At first, being anxious about the proximity of death, or sad about the loss of loved ones is logical; any other reaction would be bizarre. Our minds and bodies can’t endure that state for too long, though. The United States was slow to test for the coronavirus, and COVID-19 cases accumulated before we knew just how widespread it was. Rapke and others are now bracing for a similarly delayed wave of severe depression—and the difficult decisions they will have to make about treatments.



The elusive definition of depression has always been a source of academic tension with serious consequences. Among the many challenges the pandemic is posing, it is exposing the borders of medicine’s ability to distill human suffering into a billable diagnostic code. Some people with symptoms of depression will be told, “Everyone feels that way,” or advised to try breathing exercises when they need urgent medical attention. Others will be diagnosed with clinical depression, changing their life and self-conception indefinitely, when the problems were truly circumstantial. The system has never been flawless, but its limitations are now brought into stark relief.

For most of human history, depression was not treated in the same medical model as were diseases of the body. People with mental illnesses were written off as morally bankrupt or simply “insane.” Only in the latter half of the 20th century did the profession of psychiatry become a medical specialty and create systematic approaches to treatment. The process for diagnosing a condition in psychiatry and clinical psychology will never be as straightforward and objective as saying whether a bone is broken or not, or whether a person has had a heart attack. But it provides a common, basic language for what a clinician means when he or she diagnoses a patient with something like depression. It also helps patients get the insurance coverage and health-care service they need.

Today, depression—the clinical condition, otherwise known as major depressive disorder—is defined by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a mood disorder.* To receive the diagnosis, a person must have five or more symptoms such as the following, nearly every day during a two-week period: fatigue or loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt, reduced physical movement, indecisiveness or impaired concentration, a decreased or increased appetite, and a greatly diminished interest or pleasure in regular activities.
Experts are trained to identify exactly how much “impaired concentration” or “loss of energy” is enough to qualify for a diagnosis, and the criteria are intentionally flexible enough to factor in patients’ individual circumstances. But as the pandemic has made clear, the DSM-5 and medical model as a whole don’t provide the richness of language to account for all the nuanced ways people might look or feel depressed, even when they don’t need medical intervention. Well-meaning attempts to standardize the diagnostic process have created a false binary wherein you are a person with depression, or you are not.



Outside of medicine, depression has been most cogently defined through metaphor. As Sylvia Plath wrote: “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” David Foster Wallace described depression as feeling that “every single atom in every single cell in your body is sick.” Even some clinical models reach for alternative ways of articulating despair beyond the conventional medical model. James Hollis, a psychodynamic analyst and the author of Living Between Worlds: Finding Resilience in Changing Times, says that depression is sometimes the result of “intrapsychic tension,” a conflict between two areas of our psyche, or identity. The tension is created, Hollis observes, “when we’re forced to try to make acquaintances with ourselves in new ways.”

Many Americans do seem to be experiencing something like this tension during the pandemic. People who define themselves by their work can lose a basic sense of self if that work disappears. In such moments, Hollis says, many people regress. Many also try to escape—whether by organizing an already well-organized sock drawer, baking bread they don’t even want, or endlessly scrolling through Instagram. Jarvis, the trauma therapist, is seeing similar escapist tendencies: “For someone’s response to a huge global pandemic to be like, I’m going to work out really hard, is just as pathological and sort of dissociative as if you went to bed and didn’t get up for five days.”



For people whose response to the pandemic turns from acute anxiety into general malaise, Jarvis recommends facing the numbness head-on. It’s treatable, and not necessarily with medication. First, she says, create regimens of simple tasks that give structure to the day. The approach is working for Falcone, the acupuncturist. He starts every day with 30 minutes of stretching, no matter what. Then he walks his dog, makes coffee, and sits down to teach massage via Zoom. Deb Hawkins, the tech analyst, sent me a list of things she’s doing to help others and stay busy: She donated money to a couple of worthy causes, and made an appointment to give blood. She has created a small social bubble and signed up for an online ballet class. She says her sense of self is returning.

Small steps like these will not work for everyone, but they may help many in the subclinical realm to mitigate a dangerous slide. With the medical system already stretched thin, these could buy some time to build its capacity to care for the people who will emerge from the pandemic with severe and lasting symptoms. As important as preventive behaviors can be, human resilience has limits. Those will be tested for months to come.

The individual model of depression was never meant to address a significant percentage of a population. When the diagnosis seems to apply so widely, it’s not the people or the entire medical system that’s broken, but the social context. While many people will find ways to recalibrate their expectations and individual thresholds for joy in the pandemic, ultimately basic needs still have to be met. This means eliminating sources of anxiety, such as by ensuring financial, housing, and food security. In Colorado, Leiferman’s group is among those scrambling to help stem the tide of depressive symptoms. “Our nation is under stress. It may be that more people need [medical] treatment,” she says. “It may be that we need to, as a population, do more to relieve the stress.”


* This article previously misstated that the DSM is published by the American Psychological Association.
If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone, the Department of Health's suicide prevention hotline is always available at [phone] or 0917-558-4673.
Other numbers to call are: New National Center for Mental Health (NCMH) at 0917-899-8727 and [phone] Manila Lifeline Center at [phone] and 0917-854-9191
Hopeline may be reached at [phone]; 0917-5584673; and 2919 for Globe and TM subscribers.

[jo]

May 23, 2020 17:47:04 GMT -5 jo said:

Hugh helps address mental health issues during the worldwide lockdown, via the Gotcha4Life Foundation ( founded by Gus Worland) --

distincttoday.net/2020/05/23/hugh-jackman-reveals-secret-self-isolation-project-to-help-people-in-need/

May 23, 2020

Hugh Jackman reveals secret self-isolation project to help people in need

‘It was all a bit of a shock’: Hugh Jackman reveals secret self-isolation project to help people in need
By Joshua Fox For Daily Mail Australia
Published: 23:27 BST, 23 May 2020 | Updated: 23:27 BST, 23 May 2020



Hugh Jackman is using his time self-isolating in New York to help others in need.
After becoming an ambassador of mental health organisation Gotcha4Life in 2017, the actor has recently been hosting secret web seminars to promote ‘messages of connection and conversation’ through the charity.


‘I’ve learned so much from being on the board and we are planning on more of those talks,’ Hugh told News Corp Australia on Sunday of his passion to help people.


Helping: Hugh Jackman (pictured) has been hosting web seminars to promote ‘messages of connection and conversation’ via mental health charity Gotcha4Life while self-isolating


Gotcha4Life was founded in 2017 by Gus Worland, Hugh’s best friend.
‘Gus has been incredible … [mental health] is something we really need to pay attention to in the world and Australia, a lot,’ added Hugh.
‘Our need to look after each other, not just financially and physically, but mentally is a priority. There’s a lot of loneliness out there and this only adds to that.’


‘Our need to look after each other is a priority’: Gotcha4Life was founded in 2017 by Gus Worland (pictured), Hugh’s best friend. The actor is an ambassador of the charity
Hugh urged fans to take care of their mental health on Instagram in April, as he promoted Gotcha4Life and the great work they do.
‘I’ve been a board member since @gotcha4life was created,’ began Hugh.
‘It’s extremely important that we pay attention to our mental health. Now more than ever. Please contact your family, friends and a neighbours. A call could save a life.’


‘I’ve learned so much from being on the board and we are planning on more of those talks,’ Hugh told News Corp Australia on Sunday of his passion to help people
Hugh, wife Deborra-Lee Furness and their children, Oscar and Ava, were in Melbourne when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March.
They initially flew there from New York on a work trip as Deborra-Lee directed several episodes of Neighbours. They then returned to America after just four days.
‘No one really knew what was going on … it was all a bit of a shock,’ said Hugh after being advised to return to his American home before the boarders closed.


‘It was all a bit of a shock’: Hugh and wife Deborra-Lee Furness (pictured) were in Melbourne when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March. They quickly returned to New York

[jo]

From the Atlantic Monthly article on Mental Health issues due to the pandemic lockdowns --

Those at home Googling symptoms need to know when to seek medical care, and when it’s safe to simply try baking more bread.

Check out his Instagram stories --

www.instagram.com/stories/thehughjackman/2316262034860030133/




He's baking more and more -LOL!

Maybe mildly depressed because The Music Man has not arrived at River City

Just kidding, Mr.Jackman


Jo

[jo]

Sharing a little family celebration --

I have a niece who lives in Woodbury/Syosset side of Long Island. She is married to an American and both husband and wife are partners at Ernst&Young. Today they sent us a clip of their daughter's birthday celebration (12th birthday). Her daughter's friends came by cars - socially distancing, too ( a few meters apart) -- greeting her and her Mom at the curbside as they handed out their gifts and my niece giving them something ( presumably some food item as a way to celebrate and share the birthday under the "new normal"). It was noisy with the motor horns blaring and her friends shouting out Happy Birthday wishes through the car windows!

But if there's a will, there will be a way


Jo

[jo]

Another effort to coordinate anti-COVID19 efforts on a global basis.

Hugh passes on the mic to the the PRESIDENT of LIBERIA.

http://instagram.com/p/CApmS_tjOWz

I caught the message of the President of Liberia and Nobel Laureate on Hugh's Instagram Stories.

[jo]

[jo]

A Quarantine Party gift from James Mangold --

May 26, 2020 13:21:37 GMT -5 jo said:

Hoping he reads questions before the scheduled session.

[jo]

May 28, 2020 9:35:42 GMT -5 jo said:

Hugh Jackman's video clip on the new level of support from GLOBAL CITIZEN to combat the pandemic!


audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-191641