Disturbances and unrest in cities across the country. Tell us about that. Guest we did ask about that, and what we found is that about 60 of americans are concerned about racial discrimination, and have concerns about some of the reports around Police Brutality and communities of color, African Americans in particular in communities of color, African Americans in particular. African americans are feeling a significant amount of stress that has gone up over the past several months. We first asked that question back in may, about 42 of africanamericans reported they were feeling stress related to racial dissemination. We have seen a steady increase, to about 67 of people reporting that. Finally, racial discrimination. We have seen a steady increase, to about six to 7 of people reporting that 67 of people reporting that. We also found that an equal proportion of people are hopeful that the protests and the attention being paid to this is going to lead to meaningful change. I should point out that about an equal proportion of people are also taking steps themselves to address Racial Injustice and inequality, and doing things like learning or having conversations. People are very engaged, generally on this issue. Host when you ask about stress, what are the most common manifestations people tell you about . Guest we look at it in two ways. What are the things people are stressed about . How does that play out in peoples lives . What we know is that there are a variety of things that are causing people stress, and that has changed somewhat as we have gone into the pandemic. Generally speaking, economic stress is very prominent for people, and we have seen that during this pandemic. We see a lot of stress right now, related to concerns about contracting or getting the coronavirus. We are seeing stress related to the governments response to that. We are seeing stress related to people 1 wondering if people around them are taking appropriate preventative measures. All of those are things that we are seeing in peoples concerns. Host our guest, dr. Arthur evans, with the American Psychological association. We welcome your calls and comments. For those of you in the eastern and central time zones, it is 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, 202 7488001. For medical professionals, 202 7488002. Published the signs of stress during the pandemic, during Infectious Disease outbreak, and they include fear and worry about your own health and the health of loved ones, changes in sleep or eating patterns, difficulty sleeping or concentrating, increased use of alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, the anxiety effects include physical symptoms, muscle tensions, headaches, emotional symptoms, irritability, frustration, fear, difficulty concentrating, thoughts or worry and atastrophize catastrophizing, ruminating. You are seeing a rise in all of these across the country . Seeing ist we are that peoples reported levels of stress is going up. We have seen some of that is coming down a little bit, as people get accustomed to the new normal. Stress inifest their lots of different ways. The important thing is how we manage and mitigate stress, because we know that unmitigated stress can lead to a whole series of problems, cardiovascular problems, exacerbation of Chronic Health conditions, depression, Substance Abuse depression, Substance Abuse. It is a main reason we do the survey every year. The first is to recognize the level of stress that people are under, right now with the pandemic. We know that the level of uncertainty and the fear that people have, as a result is causing stress. When you add to that the economic downturn, and we know from years of Psychological Research that as the economy worsens, that there is more psychological distress. The stress is waning in the northeast and rising everywhere else. Is that because cases have been mitigated in new york and other parts of the northeast . Guest precisely. What were seeing as the infection rates go down in the ortheast, the level of concern about getting the virus is going down. In areas of the country where were seeing the infection rates start to rise, that there is more stress related to theres more stress and concern about people getting the virus in those areas. Host one big common factor, dr. Evans, is unpredictability is causing stress across the aisle. The current amount of uncertainty in our nation causes me stress. Agreeing to that, 76 of democrats surveyed and 67 of republicans. Also you asked, the current Political Climate is a significant source of stress in my life, 77 of democrats agreed on that, and 62 of plups agreed on that. Was that much different from earlier in the survey . Guest we see political differences on these issues consistently and theres one other area that i thought was very interesting for the survey. We asked the question about whether people felt that how people felt about the preventive measures that they are being asked to do, in particular social distancing an wearing a mask. It turns out that a majority of both democrats and republicans think that those kinds of preventive measures are very important. There are differences, though in terms of the proportions. So 88 of republicans are or 88 of democrats think that those types of preventive measures are very important and eople are doing those, about 55 of republicans feel the same way. So two important points here. One is that a majority of people believe that these things are important and so the the notion that theres a political divide in terms of peoples willingness to engage in those kinds of preventive activities, at least a majority of both parties think that thats important. But theres still differences ased on political affiliation. Host the lines are by area, stern and central time zone, 2027488000. Bernadette is up in las cruces, new mexico. Caller the reason im calling is because i do live in new mexico and the Mental Health issue is rampant here. People are being referred for Mental Health and then the Mental Health professionals, they go ahead and prescribe psychotic drugs that makes the issue worse, makes the matters worse. Some people dont need this and yet they are everywhere you turn somebody says oh that person needs Mental Health. So all of a sudden we have like, theyre recommending that everybody go to a psychologist. When in reality the psychologists thems dont really know what theyre doing because they dont take the time to figure out, some person may be on heart medication and they dont understand the effects that of prescribing a psychotic drug will have the effect with the heart medication. Host dr. Evans, your thoughts . Guest i think the caller is saying a few important things. One is, shes recognizing that people are experiencing a lot of distress, consistent with our survey. But i do think its important that when people are at the point where they are no longer capable ofing moring the level of stress that theyre experiencing and they seek out professional help. The callers point about sitting down and talking and trying to understand whats going on with someone is very important. Thats one of the hallmarks of good Mental Health care is that people are being listened to, their issues are being understood and the type of treatment being prescribed for people or being emplied with people is consistent with what the needs are of the person. I will say one of the benefits, one of the Silver Linings in all of this in terms of Mental Health is that there is increased use of telehealth so people dont have to physically go into a a clinicians office or Mental Health center, they can get that care at home. I would really encourage people, if they are experiences psychological distress if they are if they feel they are at a point where they can no longering more themselves without professional help, that they reach out for help. Call your insurance company, get someone in your network. If youre uninsured, your State Government always has a way of covering services for people who are uninsured. There really is no reason that if youre experienced Mental Health challenges for you not to get help and even the increased use of telehealth, theres no reason that even if you cant physically get there, that you cant receive those services. Host we go to steven in northampton, pennsylvania. Caller ive been working since before the pandemic was announced to the American Public and i listen to different short wave radio programs that came out of radio free china, and when hong kong went off the air, everybody was wondering what was going on over there. Now what i noticed since ive been working with all my colleagues at work, theres about 150 of us, we come from many different backgrounds. D weve noticed that the politicization of the coronavirus pandemic is ramping up the fear of every u. S. Citizen in the country. Now, if we can get beyond the media and the politicians and actually tack they will where rus and where the less pandemic is, you know, where people arent being affected by it. My wife and i recently went camping out in mid western pennsylvania. I walked into a gas station to get a cup of coffee for both of us late at night. I was surprised no one in middle pennsylvania is Wearing Masks or protection and the man behind the countier said sir, we dont have to wear that out here. He said were tired of being told what to do and what to fear. And their numbers in that county were so low it was unbelievable. What i want to know is why did we shut down the borders going from state to state let alone up to canada . In the area of canada where i vacation along the st. Lawrence river, they have the lowest in ontario. Possible theyre allowed to take hydroxychloroquine, whatever that drug is thats a proven drug my grandfather was a doctor right before the f. D. A. Came in an shut down all the doctors back in 1973. Host steven youve put a couple of things out there. Any comments . Guest i think the caller is making a good point in that different parts of the country are different. One of the things that is really important is that we follow the data and that we we lp to the experts and that we allow the strategy that were going to employ in a particular community to be driven by what the data say. I think that was the point if thats the point the caller was making, that was a good point. Host a comment on twitter says this, emotions drive actions, down ploying the virus while vilifying officials trying to reduce the spread play on emotion and impact the action take bin officials and citizens. Leadership would put citizens ahead of personal emotions. Emotions. Were with dr. Arthur evans with the American Psychological association. We hear from mark next in glendale, west virginia. Caller thank you for taking my call. The vast majority of people that are dying, im not talking about very elderly people in nursing homes, im talking about younger people who might otherwise be healthy, are dying because they experience a cytokine storm which causes your lungs to fill up with fluid. Its actually kind of rare and thats why you have you almost never see young people under the age of 18, its extremely rare for them to die. However, what this has to do with what the psychologist is talking about is the effects of chronic stress. That this, all of this, not just rioting and but the everything going on, increases cytokines tremendously. I believe that this is actually more of a factor in a lot of young peoples deaths than the actual virus itself. Host ok, mark. Dr. Evans . Guest i cant speak to that particular thing the caller was talking about but we absolutely know that stress affects peoples physical well being and cardiovascular disease, chronic conditions like diabetes and other conditions are exacerbated when people are experiencing physical or psychological distress. Its the reason we have toing more that and to make sure that were paying as much attention to our Mental Health as we are our physical health. Host that caller mentioned younger people not getting the covid19 as much as older folks. Another point on that, though is written about today in the personal journal sthoveks wall street journal. The headline of the piece says why some teens ignore coronavirus restrictions, they write that Research Shows that adolescents loosely defined as those in the developmental period raking from 14 to 26 year, depending on the function being measured, are biologically driven to seek new experiences. When children are born their brains arent fully formed. The brain creates creates a large amount ofcy napses between cells. Thecy napses get cut back or pruned. One way the brain determines whats important and whats not is through real world experiences. Writes the wall street journal. And how frequently sin apses are used. Synapses are uses. They write dopamine levels reach peak in adolescence. Dopamine supports rewarddriven learning which drives them to value Immediate Gratification over future gains which can lead o risky decisions. Guest we know that the prefrontal cortex of young people isnt fully developed until around their mid 20s. So their ability to do Decision Making and how one does Decision Making is affected all the way rough through young adulthood. We know that people are still developing. The he point of a lot of behavior around people taking risks are really influenced by a number of things. We know that social norms are very important. What are people doing in your community and in your peer group affects the decisions that people make. The decisions that people are the information that people are getting from trusted sources is very important. One of the things im very concerned about has come up on a number of calls today is that our Political Leadership is very divided in the information that its giving and how it is portraying some of the preventive measures that people need to take. So we have a very volatile environment in which the information that people are get, the sources of that information, the kinds of behaviors people are engaging in, are really all over the place. I think its very difficult for people toing more through that particularly when they are not fully developed in terms of their Decision Making abilities. Host were talking about Mental Health and stress in the pandemic. 2027488000 are for the ian and central time zones. 2027488001 for the western and pacific mountain and pacific time zones. Thoughtthis message, my is people have made changes to address the pandemic but i worry about the economy. Loss of job, reduced hours, how should people cope with that . Guest were at the point in the pandemic where we have to start thinking about the longterm impact of being in the pandemic. The reality is that in the very beginning of this we were in crisis mode. People were making all kinds of adjustments. I think its clear to people now that were going to be in this for months, if not a couple of years at least. And as we get through developing, finding a vaccine and getting people to use that and the infection rates starting to go down and the spread starting to wane. So were going to be in this for a while. The real challenge for us is how do we continue to take the preventive measures we need to take and simultaneously do the things we need to do to make sure that the economy continues to go along, that people still ve a way of having a livelihood. So we have to adjust to a new normal. And i think we reframing how we think about this from this crisis to a marathon and readjusting our lives for that marathon is going to be important. That means figuring out how are we going to engage in the economy over the long run because we cant stay completely isolated over the next year or two as we wait for a vaccine. Its part of the challenge that we have. I think a lot of people are experiencing decision fatigue. We have so many decisions that we have to make, do we send our children back to school . Do we shop . Do wed offer our groceries . So many questions that we have o answer right now during this period. And we really have to organize our lives around the longterm changes that we see here. Host one of those decisions is whether and how the family can gather together. The Washington Post riting about this this morning with the headline families face fraught decisions on whether to gather. They write that around the country famries families are facing fraught decisions over whether to see one another this summer. From california to chicago, Family Gatherings of all kinds have been link t. D. Coronavirus outbreaks that sickened scores of people but as the pandemic rolls on its testing peoples resolve. Summer reunions should be an indicater for late they are year, when we have the first thanksgiving and christmas since the pandemic. He decision about whether to hold reunions is especially important for black families for whom summer reunions is a an important ritual especially in light of the racial tensions. What is your suggestion on this . Guest i think its important for people to have the discussion, to have the discussion around or the criteria that are going to be used, whats going to drive those decisions. The decisions are being driven by, were going to do everything that we can to make sure that we are safe from the virus. Thats going to lead you down a certain pathway in terms of how you make those decisions. If your values are such that its important for if you have concerns about social isolation and the importance of family connection, itll lead you down a different pathway potentially. But whatever those criteria are that are driving your Decision Making, its really important to have those conversations and to really do everything you can to keep your family safe. I know some families are doing things like making sure that everyone thats coming to the gathering gets tested and quarantine themselves before they gather, so they have some assurances theyre not going to get the virus or be exposed to the virus during their gathering. Those kinds of things really allow people to accomplish both. Protect themselves but also make sure that they are not unwittingly spreading the virus in their Family Gatherings. Its really important for people to have those conversations and then take the best steps that they can given the situation eyre in host we go to beulah in tennessee. Caller i was relating to the Family Gatherings. Eres about 70 of us, my brothers, sisters, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and now great, great grandchildren. We have a big Family Gathering because its something our mother asks asked us to do before she passed. Thats the discussion were having now. How are we going to do this in order to continue to keep the tradition weve been doing since i can remember and secondly with the students going into the classroom and then somebody becomes infected and then theyre out of the classroom i heard one School System is having two days in, three days out. What kind of mental effect does that have on the children as well as they are walking like theyre in prison from the schools i have seen because they have on masks and didnt seem like a happy place. I know that that has mental situation on them. I know everybody will come out of this, a lot of people come out with ptsd as a result of all the things happening. Regarding this. I know myself, i think ive become agrophobic, i dont go out of the house at all even to pick up the mail. Host ok, beulah, thank you for your call. Guest to answer the first question first, i think its important to keep the decisions in perspective. Even if youve been doing family reunions for 20, 50, 70 years, you know, this is an extraordinary period. This is a once in a 100 year pandemic were experiencing. I think the question has to always be, you know, what is going to keep your family safe . Unfortunately as you noted in our comments that a lot of the infections people are getting are coming from Family Gatherings. And if you weigh not having that Family Gathering for this year, maybe a couple of years, in keeping people safe, versus running the risk of people becoming infected with the virus , how do you weigh that . I think most people are going to aeroon the side are going to err on the side of what do we have to do to make sure that we keep people safe . I think in terms of children, the point we were making about the longterm impact on children, that is a concern. We know that children are going through important developmental milestones that getting certain types of instruction at certain points and educational in ones educational career is really important. When i was before my mother passed away, i was living in connecticut, my mother saw me writing something, my mother was a schoolteacher. She was always looking at how we the thing we wrote, how we spoke and so forth. She looked at my writing and said your handwriting is so bad. She said, she reminded me that when i was in the third grade that my teacher had been out of school for a number of months and that i had sort of missed a lot of important instruction on how to write in cursive and you know, so it reminds us that these developmental milestones are really important. Ut heres the other thing. Were very resilient as people and children are resilient. Even though i have horrible handwriting b, and everyone will tell you that, i have a ph. D. , i have a great life, i have a great family. Here are ways we compensate. So i think its important for us to understand that these things that are that our children might be missing now are important. They may have longterm impact but generally speaking we are able to bounce back from that. We are able to compensate from that. We know that from research, for example, with military children. Military children have a lot of disruption in their education because theyre moving around a lot. But if you look at how those children do over the long term they actually do quite well. In fact i come from a military family. The first six years of my life we moved four times. Were able to compensate. But it is important for communities where children come from families that have lower resources and Lower Community resources that the multiplying effect of all those things are things that we have to Pay Attention to as a society and make sure that we are compensating for that because in those situations, those missing lts of developmental milestones, not having the resources, can be problematic for children in the longterm. Thats why those social safety nets are so important in those cases. Host a quick text from connie in tacoma, washington, who says, i encourage people going through mental distress to call their state or county crisis for resources, nami. Org, the National Alliance on mental illness, also has great resources. Jody is next in marquette, michigan. Go ahead. Caller my question is regarding the previous pandemic of 19171918. Have they ever done any studies on how that affected the population or what the outcomes were in the following years . On the whole human being . And then the other part was just that is there if theres something that does get developed when a population goes through a pandemic like this, is it, as you referred to, resilience, is there something thats on the positive end of that and going through something as dramatic as this . Ill take my answer off the air. Thank you. Guest thats a very good question. I dont know about looking at the Mental Health impact of the 19171918 pandemic. But the good news right now, theres a lot of Research Going on, psychological eresearch through the National Institutes of health and other entities. Were going to have a pretty good handle on how the pandemic is playing out, what some of the psychological consequences of the pandemic are over the next several years. In fact, theres some really Good Research happening now thats about whats happening in real time. The other thing is that we are the American Psychological association is talking to literally every week our colleagues from around the world including colleagues from china and from asia, other parts of asia, and africa and north america, south america. Were comparing notes about what is happening around the world in terms of the impact. When we talk to our colleagues in china, for example, one of the things that they talked about is the cognitive and Mental Health impact of having actually having the virus. And ust the pandemic building the stress, a lot of Mental Health issues for people who actually have the virus. There hasnt been as much discussion about that but thats something were going to have to look at. Your point about are there things that could be stressed, im so glad you asked. One thing we focus on is the negatives that happen as a result of the stressors we have been talking about. But we also know from research on recovery, particularly from substance use, that people actually can develop ways of compensating that actually help with stress that people might not have. When we so we expect that therell be strengths that people develop because of their need to deal with many of the situations theyre in now that will be longterm. I suspect that many of the young people who are graduating or having to make the adjustments to their graduations and those kinds of things will turn out to be pretty remarkable young people because they have gone through this. And i think we should be looking at that as much as we are looking at some of the longterm consequences. Negative consequences of the pandemic. Host to brooklyn next, samuel is on the line. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Let me ask you this. Im jewish. I have eight children. They are not going to school. They stay home. They ver [inaudible] i have only five phones for my children. You think its normal for schools are closed . Huh . Guest im not sure if i got the question. Is it normal . Its not normal. Thats why parents have to do what they can to make really good decisions. We were talking earlier about situations are different in different communities. Section 8s are different in different community, resources that people have. The resources that families have are different. How eres no one answer to we should respond around these things. Each community, each family will have to make those decisions based on their unique situation. Host next, good morning to ned. Caller good morning. Glad i got to catch up with you guys. Ive got two questions. I live out in a very rural place. Mental health is pretty nonexistent. What i can tell you is the impact that i saw, im able to travel around but lockdown. Everybody is all right but after about four yeeks four weeks, the Mental Health declines of a lot of people from the impact of that. My second thing is, im getting to a point in my career where ypt to keep doing this, it break misbody down. Ive had Mental Health issues of my own. In the past. And you know, its we can see the impacts of it now. You can see it on the streets. And you know, i was thinking about possibly i could pursue a career myself. I was interested, i went through my own crisis. Obviously theres a major shortage of psychiatrists across the country. , is it whole education any more affordable to go through, no end up in this sixdigit debt to give me a career and give back to my community . Host well get a response. Guest you know, im glad that youre interested in a career in Mental Health. I think we need more people. I can give you a couple of suggestions in terms of how to make it affordable. More affordable. Because it can be quite expensive depending on what level you get to, if you get all the way to a ph. D. Or m. D. I would strongly suggest community college. I started i have a ph. D. But started in community college. I went to all state schools. I had scholarships. I worked as i went through school. I did all of those things. When i left school i really didnt have any debt. To speak of. Its harder to do that today. But its still possible particularly if you use the resources in your community. If youre not interested in pursuing a ph. D. Or other graduate degree, you can think about there is the merging role called peer specialist or recovery coaches. These are people with lived experiences. People who have actually had Mental Health challenges themselves. Who get some additional training. And theyre not trained to be a clinician but what they are trained to do is to walk beside people who are experiencing Mental Health challenges. Very effective in terms of helping people engage. Giving people hope. Empowering people. Encouraging people as they walk through their recovery process. And thats a very fulfilling role for many people. 23 you dont want to go through the formal educational rout there are other roles that you can play that people have found very fulfilling and are actually very important for the Mental Health system. Host one more call from george in florida. Caller good morning. How are you today . Host fine, thanks. Caller thats good. You talk about Mental Health, i have a problem with some of these people on tv, seems like theyre losing it. Theyre obviously going a little crazy. I was going to ask you, what do you think the diagnosis would be for nancy pelosi . Shes obviously off her nut. Host doctor evans, let me end perhaps with the headline we didnt talk about in your stress and the in the time of covid19 survey, your third survey. I guess the good news out of this is the stress level, average stress level has dropped to 5. 0 from 5. 2 . Did that surprise you at all . Guest in some ways it did. We have a lot of other data right now that is showing that people are experience manager psychological symptoms. Theres a number of survey that was been done both in the u. S. And around the world that are showing that theres an increase in the number of people reporting psychological symptoms. There is a piece of that that does make sense. In that as people have gotten more accustomed to the new normal, that people are making adjustments. So the data that you cited actually went from 5. 4 to 5. 2 to 5. 0 in terms of how people rated their level of stress. As people have become more accustomed to this new reality, that in some ways they are experiencing less stress as a result of that. That part doesnt does surprise us somewhat, but it does make sense in that context. I think if you look at the whole picture, if you look at how people are doing generally around stress and what people are reporting, its very clear that people are experiencing significant amounts of stress and that what we need to do as a nation is that we need to pay as much attention to this because its affected so many more people than even the virus that and we know that the consequences long term could be quite significant. So id like to see more of our leaders talking about the taking care of ourselves from a Mental Health standpoint and doing things like making sure that we are socially connected, which is very important. Making sure that we are taking care of our physical selves because our Mental Wellness and physical wellness are tied. Making sure that we are being very intentional about doing things that are pleasurable. One of the things that happens when we get into the mode of sort of the survival mode of making sure we are getting through the day we sort of eliminate all those things that we get a lot of joy and satisfaction in. Its really important to be very intentional about makeling sure making sure we ten to do those things. We have to make adjustments how we do them, but its important to keep those things there. Finally, i think its important for us to reframe issues. We know from Psychological Research that seeing the Glass Half Full is very important often in helping us in terms of how we see our life situation, our feelings of anxiety and depression. So we train issues as much as possible seeing the positive, seeing the good. Doesnt make it stressful to work at home, but you have a job and there are many people who dont. That can be an important way to dope and mitigate the stress. Host the sur vast suppress strest in the time of covid19 by the American Psychological association apa. Rg. We have speaking with their c. E. O. Thanks so much. Guest thank you. A we are live from the james brady Briefing Room at the white house. Press secretary mcenany was scheduled to start at noon. Looks like they are running behind. This is live coverage on cspan. Press secretary mcenany hello. Sorry to keep you waiting. Before i begin, it is day 42 of the botched new york city