There’s no doubt that COVID-19 has triggered new levels of stress. Thanks to work-from-home mandates, school schedule disruptions, and the seemingly endless discovery of new variants, most of us have been forced to adapt to a way of life in which nothing is certain. And that’s aside from the casualties — as of this writing, just shy of 940,000 in the U.S. — and the trauma endured by their loved ones.
Nadine Burke Harris, California’s surgeon general during the pandemic, recently called it “probably the greatest collective trauma of our generation.” But what will be the aftermath of this trauma? While it’s virtually impossible to know how the pandemic might affect us in the future — the research on how this long-term stress is currently affecting us is just underway — we can turn to the experts for clues of what’s to come.
