To the Editor:
Re “Are You Depressed or Bored?,” by Richard A. Friedman (Sunday Review, Aug. 23):
I am quarantined with a 17-year-old young person desperate for peer interaction and a laid-off spouse consumed by a fruitless job search. I find myself 100 percent responsible for income and health care, with a job in education, now forced to launch K-12 schooling in a state led by Trump groupies, putting my health and that of my colleagues at risk.
Boredom sounds fantastic. Instead, I am plowing my way through significant anxiety, grateful for help from a therapist and a physician who (thankfully) are not diminishing the fear this pandemic has loosed on us all.
Karen Yeager Kimball
McKinney, Tex.
To the Editor:
Dr. Richard A. Friedman is right to question the premature conclusion that the pandemic is causing dramatically increased rates of clinical depression and anxiety. The claim is based on a handful of mental health surveys. These self-reported data are notoriously poor predictors of whether people actually meet diagnostic criteria for mental illness, which is based on clinical observation.
As a clinical psychologist and college professor, I have been struck by how my patients and students say that they feel “depressed,” but when asked what they mean describe an altogether different experience. As Dr. Friedman anticipates, they most commonly describe feelings of boredom and listlessness. However, people also use the word “depressed” to identify a litany of aversive states: anxiety, restlessness, pent-up frustration/irritability, inadequacy, guilt and suppressed anger.
In these stressful times, knowing what we feel may not be so straightforward. If we don’t know what we’re feeling, we can’t adequately cope with it.
Paul Siegel
New York
To the Editor:
While I agree with Dr. Friedman that we shouldn’t pathologize normal everyday stress or boredom, I don’t think that the fact that many of his patients have not experienced depression and anxiety flare-ups during the pandemic is representative.
So many people have faced tremendous losses, especially my community health patient base. Those losses include loss of housing, food sources, jobs, health care, along with family and friends who have passed away. It is far from “premature” to prepare for an uptick in mental health diagnoses related to the pandemic. That uptick will include post-traumatic stress, along with many other pathologies. Indeed, increased preparedness will help ensure that treatment is effective.
Karen Katz
Brookline, Mass.
The writer is a community mental health clinician with Advocates Community Counseling.
To the Editor:
Out of boredom often springs creativity. This article made a lot of important points, but what Dr. Friedman didn’t say was that when we are bored, or receive the gift of boredom, we often have our most creative ideas. Often we have so much going on, so much stimulation that we don’t have space in our brains to be creative. A reason not to overschedule our children or ourselves is to allow us/them to be bored. Boredom forces us to search around for something new.
Kathryn Kert Green
Santa Monica, Calif.
The writer is an artist and art teacher.
To the Editor:
Lacking access to excitement and novelty and other distractions may explain why some people are bored during the pandemic lockdown. But there are other reasons that while they may not cause depression can cause something akin to it — call it sadness or melancholy — that are deeply tied to our human nature.
For example, it is part of our human nature to want simple contact with others. Most of us enjoy friendly conversation with friends. Touching and hugging fulfill for many a need for human contact that cannot be replaced by simply finding exciting or distracting things to do.
This is why so many people during the lockdown are texting, making telephone calls and renewing old friendships — not because of boredom but because of their very human need for contact with others.
Maybe some are bored. But many are just yearning for human contact.
Edward Volpintesta
Bethel, Conn.