Today is Easter Sunday for us and the majority of Romanians.

To all of you, but especially those of you who are working in our NHS, care and nursing homes, and many other vital roles, I send you all thanks and the traditional greeting for today:

Hristos a înviat!

During the current ‘lockdown’ we are being reminded many times a day of the possible effects on mental health. It will no doubt be a big problem for many, but … …

I have thought for a long time that the concentration in the past few years on treatment and support (clearly necessary) to the exclusion of looking at the underlying causes is wrong. I  believe that my mother’s generation (she would have been 100 in June this year had she lived), subjected to appalling stress and strain as a result of WWII, did not suffer from mental health problems to anything like the same extent as the generations following mine.

Why has mental health become a scourge on today’s and recent generations? I firmly believe that the cause is the sick society in which we now live, a society ruled by money in which the acquisition of the latest gadget has become paramount, illustrated very well by the words and actions of the current President of the USA (and the gun touting crowds now protesting in some states of his country).

Perhaps the current pandemic will bring about a rethink. Sadly, I doubt it in the long term.

Perhaps some people will claim that mental health problems were just as rife in my mother’s generation as in today’s, that it was just not recognised. I’m certain that is not true.

My mother’s generation

Why do I say ‘my mother’s generation’ rather than ‘my father’s generation’? Simple. My father, as a Royal Navy sailor, was almost never there. So my mother brought up me and my two younger brothers as, effectively, a single mother. At the end of the war my father died so she became a single mother in reality.

Studio photo of me and my younger brother

My younger brother and I, always smartly dressed, not just for this studio photo, clothes made my mother (trip to the studio probably paid by my grandmother).

Many times my mother did not know where the next meal was coming from. But it was always there. I still have wonderful memories of stew steaming in an enamelled bowl on the hearth in front of the shiny ‘black leaded’ range, dumplings floating on top, greeting us when we arrived from school (a little under a mile away) in winter, having climbed the steep hill home through deep snow; on foot of course, not picked up in a Range Rover.

She did not bemoan the fact that she could not afford to buy clothes to dress her three sons smartly; she made all our clothes.

Christmas was made special not by piles of presents from Amazon, but by sitting together making Christmas decorations and a chicken for Christmas dinner; it was too expensive for any other meal.

As one of my birthday (fifth birthday?) ‘treats’: when I was safely in bed and asleep she took up the ‘flags’ (for non Yorkshire folk, large heavy paving stones) in our small yard so the ‘fairies’ could plant many plants in flower to greet me in the morning. Of course I still remember it!

There are many other similar examples. The point I’m making is that, in general, my mother’s generation did not sink into depression when faced with difficulties. Why do you think that was? 

How easy it is to ‘catch’ the coronavirus; a reminder

While most people are abiding by the ‘lockdown’ instructions in the UK, there are still some people flouting them, if not to the letter then in spirit. So here’s a sobering reminder.

A friend of ours’ next door neighbour was fit and going for a 20 minute run in the park every day, observing distance rules. Following his most recent run he began to feel unwell, went to bed with a elevated temperature and developed a cough.

He had been infected by the virus!