Privilege Didn’t Save My Mental Health

The relationship between privilege and mental health is critical to healing ourselves, but it’s also not everything

Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

In the wake of the Covid era, there’s been a great deal of public discussion about America’s mental health epidemic. In the first year of the pandemic, the rate of major depression in the U.S. tripled. All across the Internet, between friends, and around the world, more and more people are openly discussing mental health, destigmatizing going to therapy and owning the reality that many of us are suffering tremendously from unseen illnesses.

With the loneliness and isolation of quarantine, the stress and anxiety of a deadly pandemic, and the mass grief of mass loss, it’s no wonder Covid pushed our mental health to the brink. But as with just about every harmful effect of the pandemic, its impact on mental health was not distributed evenly.

Low-income households faced a disproportionate rise in depression rates in 2020. This is nothing new to the pandemic; the pandemic only kicked things up a notch. Poorer households have always less access to therapy, medications and other mental health interventions more readily available to the wealthy. They also must contend with the chronic stress of poverty and financial insecurity, both of which…