Anxiety - one Week Later

One week later from the BLOG post of June 13^th, 2022

By Kendall Worth

The person I interviewed in this BLOG post came back to me a week later and wanted to give me a follow-up. You may remember I talked about an isolated and lonely welfare recipient, and the benefit of social prescriptions, which are not available in N.S.

Following that post a number of people responded to me...

#1 – Some people argued that his feelings are related to the end of COVID restrictions and realizing that although he could go to things… he has no one to go with him. I want to be clear on the fact that even though COVID has affected many people, and increased isolation, this issue existed before COVID. Everyone on social assistance feels encouraged to lead a lonely, isolated life. The community of income assistance recipients are saying COVID should have taught the financially-better-off-community a lesson about what being encouraged to live a socially isolated life is like.

#2 – Some people who saw the post have asked: “Why doesn’t this person just join/take part in some social groups? It is difficult for people on income assistance to be part of social activities. The Income Assistance standard House Hold Rate of $950.00, and, money from other sources getting clawed back, explain volumes as to reasons for this. In addition, Income Assistance recipients do not always feel comfortable being part of social groups because of stigma. There is a fear that the financially-better-off-community believe things about welfare recipients that stigmatize them. I wrote about the impact of stigma here and here. Both articles clearly illustrate the stigma and myths about social assistance – views held by too many people in the financially better off community.

Update:

This welfare recipient lived throughout the whole week this past week feeling anxiety all week. Help does not exist through the mental health system. He is currently struggling with worrying about how he is going to make new friends and find new social contacts with the limited resources he lives with.

He continues to struggle with making new friends to do healthy social activity, he enjoys, like:

• Get together for coffee.

• Go for walks through through the Walking Trails of HRM.

• Watch a movie with occasionally.

When he needs someone to talk to, he is often limited to the professionals who have to stick within “Professional Boundaries” while talking to him. But what he really needs is a friend.

On Thursday June 16^th, 2022 he had a telephone appointment with the PAUSE Mental health clinic. Although preferable to showing up at the Emergency room, PAUSE was not helpful either. Really, he is looking for friendship, and, of course, the mental health counsellors at PAUSE have to work within the limitations of their professional boundaries. They are not meant to be friends.

Although following professional advice, he has almost no social contacts in the community. So it looks like yet another weekend where he is not going to be able to make plans to meet a friend to do social activities.

He has had some difficulty with friendships ending lately, and has only two friends who might be available sometimes for social engagements but they are very busy with family, and he is concerned about others who are no longer responding to his requests to get together. Trying to provide some support, I googled Ending Friendships and found this real interesting article, which reflects exactly what he is worried about.

 

The takeaway from all this is that Income Assistance recipients do not have the same resources to follow advice as people in the financially better off community. Both professionals, and that link above, give the same advice. Look to family members, trusted friends and acquaintances. Social assistance recipients often have few friends or family – and therefore, no replacement for a cancelled date. Whereas the better off community often have a larger network of friends to find a replacement for example for a cancelled coffee date.

In this recent article I talked about the creation of a union of people living in poverty. The welfare recipient who this current BLOG post is about, and I, talked about how when a brand new group gets started to advocate for solutions, we need to include making sure that professionals have better training on counselling around social isolation and make sure that they understand that income assistance recipients may not have the resources to be part of social groups due to financial considerations, not because they WANT to be socially isolated.

Lets hope that a solution to social isolation problems get developed soon”