How to build resilience when there's 'no end in sight' to the pandemic

It may feel like a lifetime ago, but it's only been about six weeks since many Canadians were excitedly making holiday travel plans and looking forward to celebrating in-person with loved ones — some even booking trips.

That was a different time. A time when cases of COVID-19 were decreasing amid increased vaccinations. 

Then, on Nov. 26, the World Health Organization announced a new coronavirus "variant of concern." 

Omicron seemed to caused millions of stomachs to simultaneously clench and morales to plummet. The bit of light people were just starting to make out at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel went dark again, followed closely by their moods. But there is hope, say mental health experts. 

"It was just that feeling of, like, 'Oh, I just give up,'" said Claudia Casper, an author and creative writing teacher at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. 

Casper, 64, who is double-vaccinated and boosted, had plans to have 22 people over to her West Vancouver home for Christmas. With news of Omicron, the party shrank to 10 fully-vaccinated guests. 

But when Casper's husband woke from a Christmas Day nap feeling exhausted, everything changed. They didn't know if it was COVID-19, but one hour before guests were to arrive, they called everyone and cancelled. 

"There is a point where you just want to stop desiring anything," Casper said. "Because it's too difficult or defeating."

Indeed, say mental health experts, the longer stress goes on, the more damaging it is to people's mental health. 

Last spring, Dr. Roger McIntyre described COVID-19 as a source of "daily, unpredictable, malignant stress" having a physiological impact on people's brains. It was leaving people feeling unmotivated and defeated, wondering how they'd get through this period in time. 

The good news, said the professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Toronto, was that the brain is resilient and that once the stress was removed, it would heal.

But, nine months later, with brains still broken, McIntyre says many people's concern has now moved from "How will I get through this?' to 'When is this pandemic ever going end?' 

"It's concerning," he said, "because it speaks to, I think, an underlying fear that this is going to go on and on and on."

It can be hard for individuals to be resilient in the face of such a vast unknown.