As United States residents continue to weather the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s taking a toll on their mental health, according to a new national survey led by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers universities.

Younger generations can teach us a lot about how to be open and honest with our grieving. 

In my previous two articles I talked about some of the self-regulation skills that younger generations might have had less opportunity to practice growing up(How to Fight Isolation and How Feedback Makes You Resilient). This time I want to focus on something they can teach the rest of us: openly communicating about grief.

After weeks of social distancing, parts of the United States have started to reopen. Stay-at-home orders are being lifted, businesses are opening, and people are starting to emerge from their isolation. In my own state of Pennsylvania, the governor has lifted the stay-at-home order for many of the more rural counties that had fewer cases of coronavirus.

Each May as we enter a new Mental Health Month, I think about people. Talking about mental health and mental illness is not abstract to me. I think of family members, friends and patients. I think both of those struggling and those providing care. Yet my focus for many years has been to think about what is universal. I reflect on people impacted by depression and those enduring hard lives depression-free.

By Harry Saltzgaver

May has been Mental Health Awareness Month since 1949. May 2020 may well be the most stressful in the last 71 years, Long Beach experts say.