Dr Bella Smith, a GP from Suffolk, has written a moving piece in the Telegraph on the impact of the Government’s lockdowns on women’s mental health.
As a GP in a small market town in Suffolk – with a special interest in women’s health – I have seen the impact of lockdown first hand.
For many, it has been a highly stressful time – childcare, home schooling and housework have automatically landed back in the laps of women, in addition to many of them having to work from home.
In the past few months particularly, I’ve noticed a high number of consultations regarding mental health, with anxiety levels among both adults and children going through the roof. One 35 year-old woman I spoke to described her home as “a pressure pot with no time, no help, no space, no privacy, with bored, anxious children who are climbing the walls from so much screen time”.
Many of us have experienced bereavements during lockdown, and for some they have been both traumatic and multiple. We must not underestimate the knock-on effect this may have for years to come. I spoke to a patient just last week who told me about her mother, who died a year ago from Covid; she had to say goodbye to her on an iPad.
It became clear that she had been carrying a huge burden of responsibility, caring not only for her own parents, but also her in-laws, in addition to running her own household and keeping her family’s health in check. She was only now, a year later, getting round to seeking help for her own emotional issues – and some of her own medical concerns – because she had prioritised other members of her family ahead of her own.
Dr Smith explains that the fear of catching Covid has prevented many women from seeking medical help for potentially serious issues.
[A] patient I have recently seen has been experiencing post-menopausal bleeding for three months without contacting the surgery. This can be a sign of a gynaecological cancer and must not be ignored. When we spoke, she told me she knew something was wrong but was so frightened of the risk of getting Covid if she had to attend the hospital for investigations that she chose to wait.Statistics show a worrying number of women are overdue their smear tests or mammograms. A recent survey by the Eve Appeal showed that in the last 12 months 28% of women called for the cervical screening had not attended and were not intending to due to worrying about Covid.
Dr Smith is right to highlight the impact of the fear of catching Covid on the willingness of people to seek help for medical problems, and on mental health. This, according to a letter published today by the British Medical Journal, has been caused in part by the “poor and unbiased reporting” of daily death statistics by the press.
Worth reading in full.
Stop press: New research commissioned by the Telegraph for International Woman’s Day shows that 49% of working mothers believe their mental health has been negatively impacted by the Government’s lockdowns.
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The trouble is, events are showing that they get more pay and benefits from millionaires and lobbyists than they do from the salaries we pay them, so that’s who’s calling the tune.
By the way, it’s not even a ukelele – it’s a small child’s beginner guitar, like my grand-daughter’s.
……’it’s a small child’s beginner guitar..’ Highly appropriate for Miliband’s IQ.
At least it wasn’t an electric guitar.
Way beyond his ken.
Everything is out of tune… The guitar, his voice, and his connection to reality.
All good facts and common sense
Well said Lembit
Milliband had a decent education (Maths, Further Maths, Physics) so he is pretending to be economically and scientifically stupid to suit some other agenda or paymaster
Lammy and Rayner, on the other hand, are just plain vanilla 100% icebreakingly – but genuinely – thick, if not as dangerous as Milliband
Red Ed’s education was at his, UK-despising, Marxist father’s knee.
Indeed and his father was a refugee. We gave the Milliband’s a home so to now seek to destroy the country that feather-bedded his family is beyond insulting and proves his scant appreciation of Britain and it’s people. He doesn’t even have Anglo-Saxon heritage. I’m tempted to call him a traitor but that would suggest a genuine link to Britain. He is acting as a traitor but he’s more rightly a foul imposter who needs exporting to his ancestral lands.
A foul, disgusting little runt.
I agree. Seeking to destroy the people and the country that gave his family succor in their hour of desperate need. Just how much lower can these creatures stoop?
Spot on. I suspect, like his brother, he is enriching himself in the knowledge that he will have made enough in 5 years to retire.
“For politicians to believe human beings are responsible for dangerous warming with our modest CO2 emissions is as preposterous as believing the sun goes round the earth.”
Which was, of course, the “settled science” of its day. Those who dared speak out against it were cancelled, just like today (they just called it excommunication in those times). Turns out that the “deniers” were right…
Indeed, as with pre-1666 (Newton) the [Authorities] denied that gravity existed.
If by cancelled you mean burnt at the stake, then yes. I expect more than 97% of experts thought the sun went round the earth!
Also we mustn’t forget that if the CO2 component of the atmosphere falls below 0.02% the world would start to deteriorate and die as plants began to struggle to survive and we would follow.
“Many regard the first three months of this Government as a farce, paid for by British taxpayers.”
And the previous 34 years, ever since the Blessed Margaret was deposed.
MT had a science degree, so that made some difference.
Brilliant – great piece! Thanks.
He’s tone deaf.
Its a cult and you know what eventually happens to cults! The main question is how do we stop the net zero madness? Answers here please.
Their credibility may be blowing in the wind, but hopefully the times are achanging
I didn’t realise that Labour has lost all three council byelections held since the election. If Rosie Duffield really wanted to hammer Two Tier she should opt for a byelection.
Well that’s a classy article: to the point and scientifically literate.
“The ants are my friends?” Yes, Mr Millipede, I’m sure they are!
Ah yes. Lembit.
A “cheeky” reminder that this guy is a LD. Well known for giving cover to the eco-crackpot, sandal wearing, lentil-bothering fraternity. And hastening the drive for wider for socialism. It’s too late now Lembit. Some of the responsibilty for the upcoming catastrophe is on you.
True.
But we should welcome sinners who repent.
Lembit’s piece has one error, it is 400 molecules per million (by volume), not atoms.
But AndyLarge is correct, the LimpDims just imagine they are a bit posher than Labour, but are equally eggregious.
In fact it is difficult to choose who is more of a venal, idiotic scumbag between Ed Davey and Ed Milibrain.
Both should have been breaking rocks on Dartmoor for many years.
It was Davey who boasted of “banning fracking” whilst trousering £18,000 p.a. for “advice” to a solar energy company and also chose the worst and most expensive option for the Hinkley Point nuke. Still nowhere near completion.
Bacon and sausages do seem to present difficulties for the clowns in Liebour.
Ah, I see what you did there!
Lembit—I have been looking into this issue since around 2007 and have read over 200 books, visited many many websites and listened to experts in the field and also people who know about and understand energy. The reason Starmer, Miliband etc don’t understand the science as described by you above is because none of this is really about science. The science is simply the excuse for the Politics, and that Politics is the UN’s Sustainable Devlopment Eco Socialism.
Absolutely correct.
Nothing to do with science. Everything to do with “The Settled Science” (as picked by the likes of Milbrain, Criminal Huhne, Davey and all the other venal nitwits, not forgetting Cameron and Johnson – both obeying their wives rather than basic common sense.)
When Dave Boy was picked as Tory Leader, Sir Reginald Sheffield, Samantha’s dad trousered £1,000 a day, rain, hail, snow or blow, for tucking eight modest wind turbines in a corner of his leafy estates. How much that has grown only he and God knows, but certainly enough to prevent Hug a Husky Dave from “getting rid of the green crap.”
And we should remember that our old Hungarian chum George Soros is now paying David Milband well over a million bucks a year for some very dodgy “Charity” work specifically designed to destroy the UK economy. Ed can be relied upon to assist his Big Bro and the likes of Dale Vince.
Follow the money…..
Follow the money and also follow the globalist idea of a world run by technocrats we never heard of controlling all of the world’s resources, wealth and YOU.
The Labour Party and the Democrats in the USA are facing God and He will always prevail. Make no mistake, God sent President Trump
I never realised before that there were sensible Lib Dems. Well said, Lembit.
Of course I agree with Lembit’s comments about the climate. But the idea of “performance reviews for MPs” makes me uneasy. We already have performance reviews. They are called “elections”.
The whole idea seems a little like those “citizens’ juries” that are beloved of some on the Left. They replace accountability to the electorate with accountability to a self appointed pressure group.
If the people are too insouciant to think before they cast their votes, or worse, if they can’t even be bothered to cast them at all, then they deserve everything they get from the hapless governments that result.
It is the people who must be won over – and it is ultimately the people who will determine whether our democracy survives.
Lembit what happened I had to double check the author. Great article!
Can we just charge Ed Millibrain with Extortion, obtaining money with menaces? After all, he’s loading our energy bills with subsidies and levies, paying wind operators to not generate, etc. all without our choice or consent. We are effectively being blackmailed – pay up or freeze! He’s certainly misleading Parliament, as there is zero evidence of a ‘CO2 heating effect’, and a large swathe of scientists now coming out saying he and the entire nut zero establishment are plain wrong. For Ed (& 2-tier Kier, etc.) to say in Parliament that there’s a ‘climate crisis caused by man’s CO2’ is an outright lie.
Personally I’d charge him with treason.
It’s a pity that Lembit isn’t in parliament. He was my MP once upon a time and I met him often. Intelligent and affable and a mile better than the two useless encumbants that followed him when Montgomeryshire swung Conservative.
The only thing I disagree with him over is excessive motorbike noise. The excuse that you can hear them coming a mile away is no excuse for this self-indulgent selfishness – I live alongside a trunk road and many bikes are louder than a 40 ton lorry!
But unlike the Prime Minister, I can tell the difference between “sausages” and “hostages,”
Say ‘Release the hostages’ fast and merge the middle syllables. It slurs easily into ‘release sausages’. It’s a bit of lazy tongue, not a case of mistaken identity.
A good article, if Lembit means what he says!
I had to double check the author, not something I would ever expect to read form a LibDem, even a repentant one.
Well done on ignoring the prevailing narrative and writing what you believe.