Covid causing mental health issues.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

There's nothing sacred about working 5 days a week. When I was a lad many people worked Saturday morning, in fact when I went to secondary school we were the first year that didn't have compulsory school on Saturday (I had to go anyway as I was in the band). Over the course of time the working week has steadily declined, if everyone went to a 4 day week say 30 hours, there would be enough work to go round. Of course that would mean improving skills, something we in the UK seem particularly bad at

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by not done it yet on 28/09/2020 18:42:35:

Mental health. Much like obesity – it just did not happen in world war II (lets not include shell-shock trauma sufferers).

I'm not sure that's true at all.

My mum was born in 1939 and all her life she got freaked out by sirens.

A sample of one, perhaps, but…

Neil

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Sadly there is a difference between hours worked and productive work. There is also a difference in the true value of different types of work for the benefit of society hence the labelling of key workers. Whether their salary is a reflection of their value is a matter for the public debate.

Many Sci-fi scenarios suggest automation and hardly any need for true work and a society that uses it's time for self-improvement – sadly a ficticious utopia more likely to be a case of ' devil makes work for idle hands'

In reality there is never a shortage of 'work' – just a shortage of jobs people want to do or pay for. Even the largest mechanised construction project ends up with a chap, a broom and a bucket clearing up. In my Utopia where fossil car no longer exist (and personally I favour hydrogen despite the energy losses) then every wide verge and motorway bank could be either a wildlife habitat or an orchard or a solar farm. Instead we have folk l myself writng stuff on forums 'cos I'm putting off getting the wood-chipper out…

pgk

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 29/09/2020 12:38:59:

Posted by not done it yet on 28/09/2020 18:42:35:

Mental health. Much like obesity – it just did not happen in world war II (lets not include shell-shock trauma sufferers).

I'm not sure that's true at all.

My mum was born in 1939 and all her life she got freaked out by sirens.

A sample of one, perhaps, but…

Neil

Not quite as famous as Neil's mum during WW2, but one Winston Churchill suffered badly from depression. He called it 'Black Dog', a term first written in a letter by Samuel Johnson (died 1784). 'What will you do to keep away the black dog that worries you at home…' As the word melancholia comes to us from classical Greece, this ain't a new problem.

As NDIY is a tough guy, definitely not a Snowflake, he won't mind me pointing out his opinion is ignorant rubbish.

'Mental health. Much like obesity – it just did not happen in world war II'? Come on NDIY, engage brain! Really? Check the facts. Read some biographies. Use imagination. Think back to your youth – didn't you notice any oddly behaved ex-servicemen in the family or working as school-masters? Or twitchy women?

Admittedly more obvious in men who'd been through the Great War, but I've known several WW2 veterans who were struggling 40 years later. Early in my career I was privileged to share an office with two men who'd spent WW2 in Japanese custody, not together. Terse, nervy, unhappy, difficult, short-tempered, dull men who were almost silent . They talked to each other and sometimes forgot I was there; nightmares, flashbacks, walking the streets at night, heavy drinking, chain smoking, bed-wetting, upset by nothing, panic attacks, rage, and a strong desire to end it all. Quite different from John Mills' doing his stiff-upper-lip act in a war film.

Dealing with mental health issues is made extra difficult by the bad attitudes of prejudiced thickos – chaps who should now better talking unhelpful rollocks because they can't or won't understand the problem. 'There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.'

Best advice, be nice!

Dave

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

S.O.D. – one of my research topics is the WW1 internment of German/Austrian civilians on the Isle of Man – many men, often young and intelligent, killed themselves as they could not take the enforced imprisonment and lack of personal freedom and forced proximity of the same people – known as barbedwire disease – many escaped such by diving into hobby work or volunteering to work, at slave rates, on farms to produce the food that prewar was imported – several hundred others mostly poor Austrians worked at poor wages in a brush factory but at least they kept sane.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

+1 for S.O.D's view. I can remember 3 teachers when I was at school who'd fought in the war. One had been in North Africa and twitched and shook most of the time, even in the mid-'60s. One had been held PoW in the Far East and was unable to turn his head more than about 30 degrees or lift his hands above his shoulder. One had been, I think, in the Navy and appeared more-or-less OK. All of them needed to be – and generally were – treated with more consideration than 'ordinary' teachers.

Just saying 'let's not include' this or that category doesn't suffice. They were there and hit by the misery just like others, and they were the same as those others before whatever happened to them.

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

Totally agree with Duncan and would go one step further, bring back retirement at 65, far to many people staying on at work into their late seventies or eighties and not giving the youngsters a chance at a job.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by Baz on 29/09/2020 16:04:33:

Totally agree with Duncan and would go one step further, bring back retirement at 65, far to many people staying on at work into their late seventies or eighties and not giving the youngsters a chance at a job.

and you think that the youngsters will pay the extra tax to fund the pensions on top of the Covid costs and Brexit. We are not even out of the bank fiasco yet.

The solution is not reduce the workforce but create more jobs.

regards Martin (part retired)

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

Disappearing posts again! Nothing like living in a democracy.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

As they related to a political leader I would have hoped the regular members were intelligent enough to know that politically related posts should not be made rather than question the mental state of others

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