Marblehead Targets Mental Health In Next Stage Of Pandemic

MARBLEHEAD, MA — One year of living under the anxiety, fear and isolation of the coronavirus health crisis has taken a toll on residents that few could have anticipated ever having to consider last winter.

As the pandemic hopefully mitigates in the upcoming months and years, the residual effects on mental health are likely to be with us much longer.

That understanding is a primary driver behind the new Marblehead COVID Mental Health Task Force that is set to convene for first time next week.

"Initially our focus was solely on the cases of COVID," Marblehead Board of Health member Michelle Gottlieb told Patch. "But as the pandemic has worn on, we've become increasingly concerned about the mental aspects of the pandemic and the different vulnerable populations.

"There is the Council on Aging population and senior citizens who feel isolated, and locked down, and now have increasing fears about what will reopening mean for them and re-entering society. Then you have the adolescent people and what this has meant for them disrupting a year of their lives at school, interruption of their activities and the inability to have the social lives they had."

Hearing concerns from several different demographics led the Board of Health to develop the coronavirus pandemic task force, which will include representatives from the Board of Health, Board of Selectmen, school administration, school guidance department, Marblehead Counseling Center, Council on Aging, a health care professional and two community members to be selected Wednesday night.

"The goal is to determine the scope of the problem and how we can help," Gottlieb said, adding that the exact course of the task force will be determined when it first meets on Monday. "Can we gather baseline data on what resources are needed and what materials can we provide? How can we increase access to mental health professionals for people in town and what are the different tiers of support that we can provide?

"It will be a town-wide task force. We don't think we hold all the expertise, but we will be the conveners of it."

Gottlieb said there will be a lot of "lifting up the rocks to surface what's there or we won't know the extent of the problem."

With coronavirus cases lower since the winter, vaccinations on the rise and restrictions loosened with the hope of more significant rollbacks this summer and fall, there may be some thought that the pandemic may be winding down.

But Gottlieb agreed the effects of the past year are just beginning to manifest themselves in some people who struggled to adjust to a new way of life, and now may struggle with going back to many of the ways that pnce were.

"There's going to be a lot of navigating," Gottlieb said. "What's the same? What's OK? And how do we deal with all the different reactions to that?

"Studies of past catastrophic events have shown that when the event ends the mental health aspects are the things that linger. COVID, in terms of the pandemic itself, is going to wane. But what's going to stick around is the residual mental health trauma.

"That's why right now this task force is more important than ever. This is not going to be a one-month blitz. We are going to have to stick around. We are going to have to follow this awhile and figure out how to provide long-term support."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)