H1N1 Causing Anxiety among Clients, Diverting Social Workers’ Attention
November 26th, 2009
The outbreak of the H1N1 virus has received ample coverage in the news lately, with stories about a shortage of the vaccine reaching the public and causing significant concerns about personal health and safety, as well as the safety of children. In response to clinic clients’ distress over the virus and the potential for a lack of access to the vaccine, a community in Nova Scotia, Canada, has diverted many of its social workers to consulting with those anxious about the virus. While the community’s public health service insists that regular mental health clients with urgent care needs are still being seen, some may question the wisdom of lowering regular treatment access to clients with long-term needs whose care providers may be unavailable.
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Comments
It is good to be doing this to help the community at large… especially at a time when there is a lot of confusion and fear in the minds of people.
With all the rumors and false information floating regarding H1N1, people are at a bigger risk than what H1N1 actually is… for instance, not many people know that if detected at a suitably early stage, H1N1 can be treated just like any other flu and the patient can be out of the hospital within a week! Most people I know think that once a person is infected by H1N1, he/she either dies or remains ill for a very long time even though it is not like that at all. We need more volunteers to dispel myths and also to guide the people who are infected.
There is a lot of anxiety in people’s minds regarding the flu and dispelling myths is a good way forward to calm the populace in general and shift the attention to actually fighting the flu rather than fret about it.
All of this nonsense about H1N1 has really started to annoy me. Yes I know it can be a scary thing to learn when new viruses and such start showing up on the radar but I think people are going mad sometimes with the masks and things like this. Be hygenically responsible, doing such things as covering your mouth when you cough and sneeze and wash your hands on a regular basis, and you should be no more concerned about contracting H1N1 than you are anything else. I think that the media has gone a long way toward blowing this whole thing way out of proportion and in turn have scared many people half to death!
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