It's time to talk about lockdown 3 and the January from hell

It felt good leaving 2020 behind because… well the less said about 2020 the better.

Let’s be honest, January is always a bit depressing, but this year was different. This year was undeniably bleaker.

It’s not been all bad of course, but not even the UK’s monumental vaccine efforts have managed to rescue the start of 2021.

The writing was on the wall in December, when Boris Johnson walked back the highly questionable plans to let households mix over five days of Christmas.

Boris Johnson during one of the government's many daily press conferences held over the past year

This was after a new variant of Covid-19 was discovered in London, and was driving up infection rates with reckless abandon.

A deadly mutant virus was not really a good sign of things to come, in hindsight.

Many places outside of London were allowed to mix on Christmas Day, however, and sure enough infection rates rocketed in January.

That led to lockdown 3, the sequel nobody wanted.

This gruesome horror story saw hospitals across the nation battle a relentless wave of patients struck down by Covid-19, as the bodies stacked up.

Just a fortnight ago, the number of coronavirus deaths reported in a 24-hour period in the UK reached 1,820, the highest since the pandemic began.

By the end of January, the UK’s Covid death toll surpassed 100,000, a number that was simply unfathomable this time last year.

And yet many of us barely even acknowledged it, perhaps numb to it after 12 months of being bombarded by grim stats.

But it’s a different story when it’s closer to home, and it certainly feels as though this latest wave has hit much closer to the bone.

Last month alone, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust recorded the deaths of 153 people who had contracted Covid-19.

The trust, which run Whiston, St Helens and Newton hospitals, also surpassed 500 Covid deaths in January.

As of today, it stands at 561.

“I think this lockdown has been horrendous,” said Cllr Anthony Burns, St Helens Borough Council’s cabinet member for wellbeing, culture and heritage.

“Since sort of Christmas time and the flipping and flopping between what we were doing, whether we were in a tier system or lockdown or whatever.

“Then we’re finally in a lockdown, and all these deaths keep coming. I think because a lot of the people who are sadly losing their lives are different.

“They’re younger, some of them, fitter. There’s quite an array of people.

“There was one a couple of weeks ago, the young girl from Liverpool, a teacher. She was 25 – and it was absolutely heartbreaking.”

A dark cloud has hung over Whiston Hospital in 2021

What we have seen this this year is the cold hard reality of the pandemic at its most brutal.

Last March, before the UK went into its first lockdown, the UK Prime Minister coldly warned that “many more families are going to lose loved ones”.

He was not lying, but it’s hard to imagine anyone truly thought the losses would be as colossal as they have been.

The impact of this, and the draconian restrictions placed upon our way of life, has undoubtedly impacted everyone’s mental health, to varying degrees.

“People are fed up. They’re really fed up,” Cllr Burns said.

“But in the same breath I think people are also more worried this time because of the things that are happening.

“I remember the Prime Minister saying right at the beginning, ‘people will die, we will lose loved ones, but we’ll bounce back’.

“People are witnessing that now, closer friends, closer family members, so the strain on mental health is a bit more worrying.

“It’s a different picture than it was.”

Today (Thursday) is Time to Talk Day, which is held every year to encourage more people to talk about mental health.

This year it is especially important to talk to others about how we are feeling, because we are all in this together.

“Sometimes these days can be a little tokenistic,” Cllr Burns said. “We’ve got Time to Talk Day today and we had Brew Monday a few weeks ago.

“And it’s good to mark them, but it’s even more important now than ever. It’s important that people get the help if they need, through the relevant services.

“But just to speak to each other as friends or as colleagues or whatever, just to look out for each other.

“If you’ve got somebody on social media, drop them a message. You’ll never know how invaluable that’ll be.

“It’s only a couple of words or it might just be a listening ear, but I think it’s important that we all work together, and it’s part of this St Helens Together.”

This week is also Children’s Mental Health Week, which again, is perhaps more vital than it has ever been.

Much focus has been put on adult’s mental health during the pandemic, but it has also been incredibly testing for the nation’s youth, despite their resilience.

Cllr Burns said: “We’re all thinking, well what about us? What about jobs, working from home, all that stress and strain.

“But for the kids, at first it was a bit of a holiday wasn’t it, all the schools shutting. The kids were loving it, but all of a sudden now reality is hitting.

“And as much as there’s one side of parents who perhaps want their kids to do well and to continue to access learning, there’s another side where there’s that child sat in a room on their own on a PC.

“Schools and teachers are doing a tremendous job to motivate them but how do you self learn when you’re a youngster?

“It’s a real difficult time.”

Children's mental health has undoubtedly suffered during the pandemic

Resources

• Children and young people up to 25 in St Helens can access online support and counselling aimed at a younger audience, at www.kooth.com
• Adults over 25 access can access free and anonymous mental health support online, without any referrals or waiting times, at www.qwell.io
• St Helens Council’s OK2Ask suicide prevention campaign website (oktoaskcampaign.co.uk) has lots of tips for looking out for mental wellbeing during Covid-19
• The NHS’s Every Mind Matters website (nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters) also features tips and support on how to look after your mental wellbeing.
• If you are in a crisis, North West Boroughs Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust mental health crisis line is free on 0800 051 1508 and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.