In March of 2025 it is officially five years since Ontario went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people might remember the week of March break in 2020 as the week where their lives changed forever. All levels of schools were off on March 13th for roughly two weeks until the virus passed. That obviously is not what happened. Instead, the world shut down and in the blink of an eye the human reality was a very different one.
LHSC children’s hospital (credit: Children’s Health Foundation)
Ontario went into lockdown for one of the longest periods of time in the world. According to clinical psychologist and Western University professor Marnin Heisel, it took around 3 years until the world adjusted to its new normal post pandemic. The lockdown however carries lasting effects for many people and their mental health. Although there are a lot of negatives associated to that period of human history, positives did come out the whole situation.
“We’re doing things online, now that we’re, you know, trying to expand services, maybe we need to think about ways of overcoming some of those barriers. That’s still, I think, discussions down the road,” says Heisel.
It has become easier for patients and people to access mental health help. A good example Heisel gave is if a student from out of town is showing promising progress with a campus mental health service, they can continue their work even when they go back home. This would cause a smooth flow from in person sessions to online sessions. However the pandemic popularized other positives for society as well.
“With the online, it created opportunities for them. Had created opportunities for working at home or doing more hybrid work situations. I still largely do a lot of my work from home because one of the things we learnt is you know, really as a society we’ve shifted,” adds Heisel.
“If you’re able to do things from home, do you need to drive across the city, drive into a downtown, pay for parking, deal with the issues and for people who live out of town, do they have to come in for that?” concludes Heisel.
Heisel believes the lockdown also helped advance mental health research. To his surprise it has also been discovered that suicide rates dropped during lockdown. Heisel explains that the lockdown could’ve been the breaking point for some people, but that for others it could’ve been a pause from all stress of life.
Covid with lockdown, with introducing other opportunities and possibilities, gave people a little bit of a safety valve or a release valve.
Marnin Heisel: clinical psychologist and Western University professor
“When we saw a lot of people from big cities like Toronto and that, selling their places, moving out to the country, I see that as sort of being a part of it, that people were feeling really stressed and strained by sort of the rat race” says Heisel.
Although not everyone had the same reaction to the lockdown. It is evident that it has affected many lives. Some people might have enjoyed the free alone time quarantining, while others would have been in torment from not having any social aspect throughout that time.
