The COVID Effect

COVID has the ground moving for all of us and regular adaptations are required. For me this means finding ways to squeeze more students into the gaps my parent-care permits, while also ensuring that the blog can continue.

In order to accomplish those things, I will shift to posting new blogs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Tuesdays line up with my CBC columns, but those do occasionally move due to major news events, so there may be exceptions to this schedule.

For the remainder of the week I will be posting edited versions of previous blogs on the facebook and twitter feeds. These are all timeless in nature, so for anyone who hasn’t been reading my work over the last decade, these will effectively be new posts.

I’d also like to thank you for your readership, and for those who listen to the columns on CBC. It’s been nice hearing about how I’ve been helpful to you during this strange year, where many of us have faced some of the biggest challenges life will throw at us.

Fortunately, COVID led a lot of people to seek care for issues they’ve had for a lifetime, so even something as bad as a pandemic can still have upsides. That says a lot about our opportunities in life.

In an effort to be helpful with even an announcement post, below is a link to a discussion with Dr. Roger McIntyre, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and Dr. Natasha Rajah, professor in the department of psychiatry at McGill University and the Douglas Research Centre in Montreal.

In it they discuss common pandemic brain responses. You may be comforted to know that some of your personal responses are quite common and act as a sign you are a normally healthy person.

I’m also pleased to report that the science that was done during the pandemic demonstrated that the advice I gave from the outset did point people in the right direction. Knowing how our minds work can help a lot when we have to face the unknown.

If you are unable to play the streamed audio, please note these episodes are also available as downloadable podcasts:

PANDEMIC BRAIN EFFECTS

I’ll leave it at that for now. Here’s to you each finding the best in today and I look forward to connecting with you tomorrow. Until then,

peace. s