Suicide and Long COVID

How Many Have Chosen This Course Of Treatment?

45 days

*Trigger warning. This discusses difficult issues about Long COVID and suicide.

If you need help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or go to The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website. They are there to help you NOW. (Just click this link.)

This topic is a really tough one. And I suspect some of you won’t even get past the title. You may click off the page and move along, pretending it never bothered you. I get it. No one wants to think about such a depressing subject. But someone has to, because it will save multitudes of unnecessary deaths. Hopefully you may be stirred enough to stick with me here. And you may even be prompted do something about it.

I’ve looked for research papers on this issue and found only one that had a solid mention of the implications of how Long COVID may be taking its toll on the mental health status of individuals. Long COVID patients are daily suffering with no actual strategic or intentional mental health intervention from psychiatric or religious/spiritual communities.

In an April 2021 paper titled, “Post-COVID syndrome and suicide risk”, it states, “Studies of suicidality in COVID-19 survivors are urgently needed and will be a new area of suicide research.” The paper basically is sounding an alarm to the mental health community, letting them know that a tsunami is headed their way. That was a year ago. And still, I can not easily find any statistics, no major information on suicide risks or major news reports, on what is happening to Long COVID patients and their mental and emotional struggles today.

I can assure you that from my own personal observations, LC sufferers are feeling it. And the longer the medical community does not have answers to help them recover, the heavier emotional burden LC sufferers will continue to carry. The weight on their shoulders is bearing down on them and I am literally watching it bring them to their knees.

This. Is. A. Crisis.

Now, before friends and family freak out on me and think this is a secret message, that I am contemplating ending my life…fear not. I am in no way depressed or have given up hope. Right now, I am fine. I am only 45 days into this mess. But many others are not. They have been tragically suffering day in and day out, for months on end, unable to do normal tasks or care for themselves. Some, for nearly two years now. These are the true Long Haulers with severe symptoms who have found no relief. They are physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. And they are cracking under the weight of it all.

Many of these Long COVID individuals suffered with mental health issues before they even got hit with COVID in the first place. They had to face isolation at the start of the pandemic and the demons of what being alone in your head can bring. And now this? Having Long COVID for many months? To some of these individuals it feels like the final straw. They are struggling every morning when they open their eyes to keep their chin up and face another day.

Yet, at the same time, behavioral health agencies are now over-taxed. According to the NYT article, ‘Nobody Has Openings’: Mental Health Providers Struggle to Meet Demand,‘ They don’t have enough personnel to care for everyone in need after the pandemic hit. Many offices shut down “in-person” therapy sessions, giving only access through video services. At least that is what we also found here in Colorado with our own HMO, Kaiser Permanente. And only the rich who can afford phones and computers plus soaring internet costs can actually use this avenue of care. How many people are falling through the cracks?

I am on private Long COVID boards getting emotional support and health advice every day. I have a great personal support system. I believe in prayer and mindfulness. I have also just discovered tons of Long Haulers on Twitter. I participate making comments, gathering info and providing support, just like all the of rest them. (Follow me @happyflashback) Every day I read the outpouring cries of help. Every day I see the sadness and the verbal expression of tears. Many are giving up. They are struggling. And it is breaking my heart.

These cries come from real people in real pain, and we are all rushing to them in support. It is incredibly helpful and nurturing to all of us as we bond together, circling them as family. That’s because we understand.

Right now we are the only people in the world who are really listening to them. Right now, we are the only people who are taking the time to hear the battle cries of our fellow soldiers. We are the platoons on the front lines taking the hits. We are the warriors left out on the fields waiting for backup while the enemy keeps bombing us, hopeful for the help that never seems to come. We are dragging eachother into the trenches for safety and tending to eachother’s emotional wounds. We keep waiting for that distinctive sound of Blackhawks in the distance coming to save us. But in the dead of night when we can’t sleep, all we hear is silence and disappointment.

We get it. Long COVID is hard. And we all have those moments of weakness and frustration when we need to just admit it and cry, “uncle.” And when we have that breaking point, we are thankful to find each other on social media for support to give us some peace.

But we all know there is another scary truth out there.

Not everyone cries out when they need help.

Not everyone is ok with reaching out when they know they are sinking. Many feel ashamed to admit their sadness and their defeat. They go inward. They don’t go looking for support groups online. They aren’t on Twitter. They aren’t public people like you and me. They retreat into their homes and lock themselves inside and are alone.

They have no one.

These are the people I cry for and worry about.

What about those who live in abusive households who have already faced emotional, mental or physical abuse before they got COVID? Now they are sick and unable to do the things they used to. Now their abusive partner escalates situations even worse than before. Now the Long Hauler has to take on so much more than they even thought was imaginable. They are trapped with nowhere to go.

What about the addicts? What about those that had everything under control for many years, but now they can’t get to their meetings? And yet now, liquor stores conveniently deliver. It is so much easier to feed your addiction while being trapped at home than it is to get healed from it.

How about those that already struggled with depression before they got hit with Long COVID? There are so many other Long Haulers going through other things that I haven’t even mentioned here. And that means the number of possible LC suicides can grow exponentially just as quickly as we can come up with ideas.

The suicide risk for Long Haulers is not being talked about. But it is out there. And I fear that it is bigger than any of us can imagine. Maybe we can not answer why we all are suffering from Post-COVID after-effects. But we can and should be answering to Long Hauler’s emotional welfare. Professionals can be helping them now. Today, they should be launching a massive awareness campaign about how Long Haulers can get help they need for their mental health.

I am clanging a bell to wake up the community. I want people to pay attention to the fact that Long Haul sufferers need to be believed. They need to be heard. Long Haulers need to stop feeling like they are being gaslit just because there are no answers to why they feel as sick as they do. They need to feel like they are not crazy. And they also need more than just medical assistance.

Will you help me do that?

They FIRST need to feel VALIDATED.

And then, they need to be given helpful tools on how to cope with the daily feelings of how to live in the unnatural and painful body they have been left with.

Spiritual leaders also need to be praying over and supporting their communities. They need to be reaching out and finding Long COVID patients, helping them and their families. These families need to feel restored! These families as well as single people, are struggling to support themselves. They are losing their jobs and becoming homeless. It is a crisis. And no one is paying attention.

I don’t know how many Long COVID individuals are committing suicide.

Because. I. Fear. They Are Just. Disappearing.

If you need help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or go to The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website. They are there to help you NOW. (Just click this link.)

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And please feel free to tell others about it too, especially if you know someone who may be suffering from Long COVID. I hope we can ease the pain a little bit together.

See you next time.