Illustration by Carson McNamara
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic is abating, hopefully fading into endemic status, another, long-term malady continues to impact our everyday lives.
It’s an angry, polarized world out there, and that’s hazardous to health.
Doom scrolling, political polarization, road rage, conspiratorial thinking, misinformation and mistrust feed the flames of anxiety and, in turn, anger.
Anger is a primal instinct. You feel it, and you vent; you don’t first reflect on why you’re feeling angry, says Dr. Salmaan A. Khawaja, a clinical neuropsychologist with Bon Secours Mercy Health System.
And if you confront someone when they’re angry and argue with them, you further fuel their anger. Khawaja says increased anger, anxiety and stress may lead to problems at work and home, substance abuse, depression and suicide. Anger shortens the lifespan, and it is a culprit in a range of conditions, including obesity and neurologic diseases. Anxiety and stress are directly linked with heart attacks and strokes. Anxiety may also trigger tremors or dizziness. It can lead to mood swings or problems with memory or attentiveness.
The pandemic seems to have exacerbated societal anger, and medical professionals have found themselves the targets of abuse.
“Many physicians, nurses and other health care workers lost their lives to COVID-19 while caring for patients with COVID-19,” says Dr. Jonathan Foote, a gynecologic oncologist with Bon Secours Commonwealth Gynecologic Oncology. “However, there is now a large portion of the U.S. population who look down on health care workers, and in fact seem to think that we are not working in their best interest, which is against the Hippocratic oath that we all took in medical school.”
The pandemic presented the perfect storm of angst and anger: a deadly infectious virus, invisible and evolving unpredictably, that people had little control over and that caused an array of reactions in seemingly similar people, Khawaja says. It is easier to deny the existence of something that is scary and invisible than it is to acknowledge its existence.
The impact of the pandemic on physical and mental health has been profound. People have died unnecessarily, Khawaja says, because of their anger and belief in misinformation.
“I am seeing more patients with signs of dementia, more adults with cognitive and emotional changes, and more children with mood and cognitive problems than ever before,” he says. “I am seeing more patients who have developed cognitive and emotional problems directly related to the anxiety caused by fear of the COVID vaccine; debilitating symptoms that have lasted for over a year in some people, all because of anger, fear and anxiety.”
It’s a problem that cuts across the belief spectrum. “The numerous patients that I have who are members of QAnon, the anti-vaxxers, the ultra-conservative, the ultra-religious, the ultra-liberal, the extreme left and the extreme right patients all have the exact same characteristics of anxiety, which stems from a sense of lack of control [or that control is being taken from them], and the resulting anger that ensues, all projected outward,” Khawaja says.
“There are inpatients dying of COVID in hospital that tell me they do not have the disease that is killing them, and instead are angry that I am part of a global conspiracy of some sorts. After they die, their angry family members still hold similar sentiments. These delusions stem from anger, which stems from anxiety.”
It’s not just anger: “Just about any of the negative emotions that you would put on your short list seems to be up,” says Dr. Edward Peck Jr., a Richmond-based neuropsychologist with Neuropsychological Services of Virginia.
“I am seeing more patients with signs of dementia, more adults with cognitive and emotional changes, and more children with mood and cognitive problems than ever before.” —Dr. Salmaan A. Khawaja, clinical neuropsychologist, Bon Secours Mercy Health System
The depth of the problem is hard to gauge; standard measures relied on by mental health professionals may not be useful in the current situation, according to Peck. Questions typically asked to assess anger in an individual may not apply to societal situations, feeling angry because you perceive yourself as helpless in the face of family situations, your income, the environment or your body.
Peck notes that people like to believe the rules they follow are universal, sort of a personal golden rule. We tend to believe that how we handle ourselves in a situation is the logical way of proceeding, and that others similarly perceive a situation. “Unfortunately, people follow different sets of rules,” he says.
Primal Emotions
Negative, intense emotions affect other aspects of life, from how you sleep and eat to how you interact with others. Stress leads to anxiety, and prolonged anxiety breeds feelings of anger and hostility, says Dr. Michele Cosby, assistant professor of psychiatry for Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU and a licensed clinical psychologist with the Virginia Treatment Center for Children.
“Anger is often an emotion that is easier to feel because it usually drives us to some form of action and a desire to take control,” she says. “Sometimes that control leads to unhealthy and negative behaviors like aggression, substance abuse, self-injury and so on.”
Khawaja notes that most anxiety disorders stem from control issues; the less one’s sense of control, the greater the anxiety, and the greater the anxiety, the greater the anger.
“Because we don’t feel like we did this to ourselves, our increased anger increasingly projects outwards until we hit the target that we believe is responsible for our anger,” he says, “not realizing, of course, that the source of anger is ourselves.”
People who have suffered the most during the pandemic had fewer supports, says Dr. Rajinderpal Singh, a Glen Allen psychiatrist. He notes that patients with church communities did well through the pandemic, while many “who were on their own journey, they are suffering.”
Healing the World
Peck says it’s up to each of us to do what we can to heal ourselves. Look first to your own physical and mental health, and then you can have the energy to help the next person. “Heal yourself so you can heal others,” he says.
But there’s no quick fix.
“It will be years before we can recover from our current state of affairs, if we are able to recover at all,” according to Foote. “It will be a shame if our country cannot recover from the societal decline we have seen in the last six to seven years.”
Foote says a key to recovery is restoring the concept of fully respecting one another as a basis of society — “recognizing that we don’t all have to agree, that we need to see one another for whom each of us is, that we are all human and that we are all living life as best we can.”
Singh is upbeat; he believes that there’s always an opportunity behind every difficulty. He sees a need for mustering resources to drown out misinformation, a job that entails an outpouring of accurate information from sources ranging from local social services to media outlets.
Debate will not defuse anger; it hardens a person’s viewpoints, according to Khawaja. We need to listen to one another, which won’t necessarily lead to agreement, but will allow us to gain empathy, to realize that people with whom we disagree may likely have more in common with us than they realize.
“We should speak less and listen more,” he says. “Healing, as individuals and as a society, is going to require us to learn how to listen and learn how to stop yelling long enough so that we can listen.”
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