Cabin Fever for Christmas
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the greatest confinement of people to their homes in history, we are all dealing with the mental health fallout. People have lost family or friends to Covid-19 or had to adjust to new and frightening changes caused by sudden unemployment. Indeed, many of us will have experienced multiple kinds of losses, disruptions and shocks.
What has been particularly striking since March 2020 and even now, is the impact on large swathes of the global population from prolonged periods of social isolation at home, in lockdown or its tiered variants. This phenomenon has brought unseasonal and now winterly bouts of cabin fever — with increased irritability, depression and anxiety.
Of course, buoyed by vaccine success, we look forward to a more open, less confining 2021, but this winter will remain for many people in the UK and elsewhere, a profoundly challenging time of waiting, waiting, waiting. It will be a time when cabin fever regains its grip following the summer lull. As the harsher weather limits garden meet-ups and social restrictions remain, and as the dark nights enwrap us, we will all tire of being within four walls (again).
Many people, as we saw in the initial lockdown, will struggle with intense levels of loneliness or domestic conflict and violence. Even for those able to get a Christmas squeeze by enfolding into their family bubbles, this may not herald joy and peace. The fragility of these ‘bubbles’ will be tried and tested in domestic claustrophobia, probably sparked by ownership of the remote, loss of Wifi or encroaching elbows on the sofa. It may even bring further misery in a rise in Coronavirus cases. Sadly, some people risking family hugs before the vaccine arrives us will not get to taste or even smell the turkey. For others, turkey may not even get onto the table in the first place.
In our book, Cabin Fever: Surviving Lockdown in the Coronavirus Pandemic, my son Jamie and I explore the definitions and social and cultural history of cabin fever. We discuss its origins emerging from the physical fever caused by typhus through to the use of the term to refer to psychological responses to prolonged isolation or confinement. Offering insights on cabin fever in different contexts (at sea, on land, in the air and in space) the book draws on an array of evidence of the impact of this folk syndrome. In the brunt of the pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that adapting to lockdown has become a matter of personal and public endurance and creativity. This book provides an important account of the threat of cabin fever in the pandemic and the best-known antidotes for it.
While we remain in our cabins, licking the wounds of 2020, and possibly pulling crackers on our own, we should try to open our hearts and minds to be part of a more creative society in the future — less dependent on the pre-pandemic fixes we all thought we loved. First, we will have to dig deep to defeat cabin fever, to endure this winter season and find fresh mentalities in a new era for all of us. We hope the book provides some useful reflections and responses to this challenge.
Link to book:
