COVID-19 and Mental Health

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

Welcome to StarTalk.

Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist.

This is a Cosmic Queries edition, Cosmic Queries in the Coronaverse.

This is our continuing series of StarTalks that focus on the human condition during the pandemic.

And Chuck, Chuck Nice, my co-host.

You know, I can’t do this without you, you know.

That’s right.

Yeah, man, I’m happy to be here.

I have something to do right now, this is great.

And today we’re focusing on mental health.

Previously, we talked about the virus specifically.

Now we’re talking about how we’re dealing with it.

And you know, there’s only one person we can reach out for, you know, only one, Heather Bowen.

There can be only one.

Heather Bowen, welcome back to StarTalk.

Thanks, I’m glad to be here, but the pressure is on.

It’s totally on.

The weight of the universe on my shoulders, okay.

We didn’t find you wandering in the streets.

You are a neuroscientist, you’re a professional therapist, and you’re based at…

Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai Hospital in the upper east side of New York City, of Manhattan.

And so, we’ve come to you for so many things.

Who would have thought you’d be that useful to us?

Right, because in everyday life, mental health isn’t an issue, but now, suddenly, it’s so important.

So on the landscape, there’s like the freakout moment when it went from just an outbreak to a pandemic, and that must have had emotional cost.

And then, there’s everybody’s like on lockdown.

Now, if you live in a big house, maybe that’s not a problem, but we live in New York City, and apartments are small.

So I’ve read articles about this.

It’s not working out in a lot of households.

And so, is there anything I’m missing in that list for what we should be thinking about?

So in a way, it’s sort of the perfect storm in that initially we had, you know, we call the fight or flight response, right?

The panic, the fear.

It’s really a physiologic response to threat.

Some people in the initial stages of this were looking to flee, right?

Like, I gotta get out of here.

But there was really, in some ways, nowhere to go, right?

It’s a global problem.

And then this people started panicking, panic buying, reaching for safety, right?

You know, toilet paper for some reason became the safety resource.

Nothing makes me feel safer than a clean…

I’ll need the toilet paper.

It’s like, oh my God, we’re all gonna die, but I’ll do it with a very pristine bum.

Exactly.

So this panic response, and then, and that kind of, as we were in this for longer and longer, resolves a bit, but then these new issues arise, right?

One person, I’ll never forget this tweet, they said, like, this is either gonna end for people who are married in murder or divorce, right?

Yeah, like, people, if you already had issues, they become exacerbated.

Now, if you take people who already had mental health issues, whether it was anxiety or depression, now you’re throwing in isolation.

You know, work used to be an outlet for people, right?

A way to maybe get away, to get away from bad relationships, but now you’re all stuck in a house together.

So, anything that was already there is exacerbated.

And then, in addition, people who weren’t dealing with mental health issues, but perhaps they had a vulnerability, suddenly these mental health issues start to arise.

But just one other thing I want to mention, which is a really interesting phenomena that I’ve talked about and written about a bit, is that I have some patients, and so do my colleagues, who previously had OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder, afraid of contamination and social anxiety.

And just the subset of them actually have gotten better during the pandemic, a bit better.

Suddenly, they’re not alone.

Suddenly, they’re not the odd person out.

They already were engaging in these behaviors of washing hands and being very conscientious about germs, and now everybody else is doing it.

When you said they’re not alone, you mean their behavior is no longer odd.

Exactly.

Because others have joined in in their peculiarities, and so now it’s a normalizing force on their conduct.

Exactly.

Really, I think really what they’re experiencing is they’re looking at everybody going, I told you, I told you.

It’s validation, it’s a validation.

Right, and then people with social anxiety, I mean, this is great.

There’s no pressure to have to go out.

They have a perfect excuse to not engage.

So for interestingly, some people with particular anxiety disorders have actually been more relaxed during the pandemic.

So it doesn’t affect everybody in the same way.

Okay, so there’s another dimension here, which is the people who have been, I think it especially affects people whose livelihoods were sort of outlawed during the pandemic at restaurant owners and restaurant workers are for me the top of that list, but their list is long and there’s a huge industry there.

And some of them in some states have now rebelled.

Would you say that’s a psychological state or is it just a normal, yeah, of course you’re going to rebel because the government took away your livelihood?

There are a few issues.

First, obviously the economic stress is an added factor for people.

There is also one, some people react with denial.

You know, it’s so overwhelming and also the uncertainty.

You know, when is it going to end?

What if we don’t have a vaccine?

You know, that, so we have these psychological defense mechanisms.

One of them is denial.

Oh, you know what, it’s not even that bad of a problem.

It’s just like the flu.

Like, let’s just go back to life as normal.

And almost it’s kind of a denial.

It’s obviously motivated by these very good reasons.

You know, they’re in economic hardship and they can use all that to rationalize.

But a lot of it is you have to, in order to do that and remain without having what we call cognitive dissonance, you have to downplay the threat.

Oh, it’s not so bad of a threat.

And that will justify, yeah, justify your behavior.

This will go away.

It’ll be like a miracle.

Wait, so Heather, you raise a fascinating point.

What you’re saying is, since we are thinking creatures, emotional thinking creatures, the juxtaposition of those two dimensions of what it is to be human have fascinated consequences so that what you’re saying, if I understand correctly, is you can’t just up and say, we need to go back to work because I got to make money.

You have to distort evidence or distort statements made by scientists so that, like you said, it doesn’t conflict within you.

And so they got to simultaneously say it’s not so bad and be in denial.

That’s a peculiar manifestation of human thought.

I mean, that’s the human condition because we have these self-protective mechanisms of our ego, right?

We don’t want to say, oh, I’m a bad person.

Like me going out, let’s say, without a mask, I’m going to kill somebody’s grandmother, right?

Nobody wants to say, I’m so in order to get away from that thinking, you’re a bad person.

You have to change the narrative to justify your behavior, to protect your ego.

So you think, oh no, I’m a good person because actually there is no real threat and I’m not threatening the lives of other people.

Or else you’d have to say you’re a bad person, but the ego protects against that.

How much of this is cultural what you guys just discussed?

Because in some cultures, it’s seen as a responsibility.

Like, I got to wear a mask because I have to protect the collective.

Whereas in America, we’re like, you don’t tell me what to do.

It’s America.

I got rights, damn it.

I got rights.

So how much of that is culture?

There is a significant part of it that is cultural.

Less so when it comes to those defense mechanisms like denial and so forth.

That’s pretty, you know, a biological kind of reality across the board.

But these, the comparison between a collective society and an individualistic society, right?

The collective is less concerned about their own, let’s say, rights or privileges.

And it’s more about protecting the community.

Whereas in places like America, it’s individualistic, right?

And there’s some positive aspects to that.

You know, we’re high achievers and the rest.

But when it comes to something like a public health crisis, that could have very dire consequences as we’re seeing now, right?

It’s who cares about your health?

It’s about me and my business.

I mean, again, a legitimate concern, right?

I have economic concerns, but the weights between the public good and the good of the individual, it’s sort of a little bit out of balance.

And so there are these cultural differences.

And that is becoming apparent in terms of the numbers, right?

I mean, how America is doing compared to some other countries.

So, Heather, we went to our fan base to collect questions, and they knew the topic and they know you.

So I think they’re more your fan base than ours.

They followed you.

So, Chuck, you got the questions.

You know the drill.

That’s right.

We always start with a Patreon patron because they give us money.

And, you know, listen, I’ll do anything that you want me to do for money.

I could use a good cleaning, and I have some kids that I could use caring for.

That’s so funny.

All right.

Let’s start off with Lydia, who says, Dear Neil and Heather, are there also positive sides during this pandemic for mental health?

I can imagine that some people now have more time to do certain things they could not do before, and the result is a sense of accomplishment.

Just to preamble that, I think I’ve noted this in my social media.

Isaac Newton, in 1665, escaped London.

Actually, he was in the University of Cambridge.

The University of Cambridge closed during the plague of that year, and he went to his childhood home in Lincolnshire.

That’s when he made major advances in our understanding of gravity and light and mathematics.

This would be an example of productivity going up, provided you have the right mindset in the first place, I suppose.

Heather, what can you say about people’s creativity, productivity and the like?

Again, it varies.

There’s no one blanket answer for everyone.

It depends on people’s situation.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in a situation, unlike myself having to care for a three and six-year-old right now, it might be an opportunity to, for example, I would love to work on my book right now.

Some people do have the opportunity to do that.

They are using this time, this sort of that was given to them in these productive ways, but then others feel the pressure.

Oh, I should be doing something productive and I’m not.

And so it’s a double edged sword.

But I do think, and I’m finding this again with patients, is that some of them are using this time to reset, to take a pause on their always on the treadmill, rushing through their life and to say, you know what, actually, I want to work on my mental health issues now.

I have the time.

This is a really good opportunity to work on myself now that we’re on a sort of a pause before I go back into the rat race.

So people are using the time, I think, in positive ways when they can, right?

When they’re not struggling in other ways, they can use it to work on themselves or to work on a project.

And again, it also depends on how long this time period lasts for.

You know, the longer it goes on and then when the frustration starts to build, you know, there’s only so much you can do.

And after a while, again, we’re almost hitting that point here in the US where people are like, we want to get out, we want to get out.

But if you can find a project to work on, I mean, we’re not all Isaac Newton, but…

I don’t know.

And, of course, you did highlight at the beginning discussion some positive gains for people who are otherwise…

You didn’t even use the word antisocial.

What’s the term you used?

Well, they have people with social anxiety.

Social anxiety.

Yeah, they don’t have the pressure to have to go out.

They don’t feel bad about staying in.

Again, people with OCD feel validated.

They’re not alone.

So there are these positive effects on mental health.

And people who are closer to their…

Maybe their children came home.

They came home from college or spending more time with their kids.

And that could be very valuable and rewarding as well.

That can also be a curse.

Yeah, depending on your kids.

So, Chuck, you got another one there.

Here we go.

Let’s go back to another Patreon patron.

This is Jim Marshall.

And Jim says, Hi Neil and Heather.

As a practicing mental health counselor, I am deeply concerned by the level of anxiety I see around me.

Do you have any suggestions for people to get the help and support they need to weather this time emotionally?

I’m going to say Jim, as a practicing mental health counselor, you should already know the answer to that.

No, Jim’s asking for as a public service to the people who are listening.

So go ahead.

Well, fortunately, they have lifted the restrictions.

I don’t know how long this is going to last for.

So normally, let’s say you’re licensed in the state of New York to practice.

You can’t see patients via telehealth in California.

But they’ve lifted those state restrictions.

So now a mental health professional can, via telehealth, be available to anybody across the country.

So that really opens the floodgates.

Many people who normally wouldn’t have access to a mental health professional now have many more options.

They’re also, you know, I work at a hospital in Mount Sinai, you know, is in the heart of the pandemic, and a lot of the frontline workers are experiencing severe mental health issues, given what they’re exposed to every day.

So they’ve provided all these new services for providing mental health professionals to frontline workers.

You know, there’s a number they can call.

So people are aware of this issue and are making changes to make mental health professionals more available.

So, Heather, forgive my ignorance or possible ignorance in this question, but I mean, how much training do you and others really have regarding pandemics?

I mean, this is not an everyday thing.

You know, this is not, oh, nobody loves me, everybody hates me or some other depressed state.

This doesn’t really have precedent in the current generation.

So what do you draw upon in your own professional expertise to address this?

Yeah, so it’s true.

Not everybody has the toolkit to deal with the psychological issues.

But, you know, at one level, you know, anxiety is anxiety, you know, fear, uncertainty, fear of a potential threat, whether it’s because of the pandemic or because, you know, you just lost your job or whatever it may be, the same tools to apply.

But that being said, you know, somebody who is, who specializes, say, in schizophrenia, they might not be the best therapist to treat the depression and the social isolation and the anxiety.

So it does, there are variations in terms of therapists, but they, but when there is a crisis, it’s sort of, it’s all hands on deck, you know, so anybody who has some sort of training, it’s better to have something than nothing, right?

And then ideally you have a specialist who like, one of my specialties is anxiety.

So that, you know, comes in handy right now.

But again, it’s better to have something than nothing.

And the rules, the, in even terms of ethics, you know, who you are and aren’t allowed to treat in non-emergent times changes now.

So when there is an emergency and if somebody does not have health care available or mental health care available, you are legally allowed to treat them because that whole concept, something is better than nothing.

Chuck, give me another one before we go to break.

All right, here we go.

This is Ben to the Gym.

That’s the handle, okay.

Ben to the Gym.

I was going to say where do you live because they’re all closed here.

All right, he’s from Instagram and Ben to the Gym says, what is it that people like myself, although feeling for those having had hard times, who are enjoying quarantine while others are having a breakdown?

Is it purely an environmental thing growing up or does our biochemistry play a role?

So Ben to the Gym is loving the quarantine.

And he’s like, I’m living my best life.

And we will get back to that after the break.

This is StarTalk.

StarTalk Cosmic Queries in the Coronaverse Mental Health Edition.

Chuck, you just read a question from somebody who’s saying, yo, I’m loving it.

I’m loving it.

Like, quarantines is like McDonald’s to me.

I’m loving it.

But he, so Heather, he raises a very important point, a nurture nature question.

Is he loving quarantine, holding loss or jobs aside for the moment, is his reaction to quarantine something biochemical or is it genetic, is it learned?

Where does he fit in the spectrum of people’s reactions?

Right, it is partially biological.

So we’ve done studies on resilience, looking at, for example, Israeli soldiers who have experienced the same combat situation, some of which go on to develop PTSD and others are fine.

And there is, there are some genetic differences that actually make people more resilient to hardship.

And always, those people who find that the cup’s half full, that kind of outlook on life.

And we find that even when something really bad happens to a person, let’s say they get into a terrible car accident and lose their legs.

If the person was a sort of resilient, a sort of happy-go-lucky person before the accident, they’ll have a little bit of a down period and they’ll go right back up to where they were before.

Same thing is a person who tends to be more depressed, less resilient, they win the lottery, right?

They’ll have a little blip of happiness and then they end up going right back to where they were before.

So your preexisting personality, and that is biochemical and genetic, will respond to the environmental circumstances in a very predictable way.

So I’m sure that this person has probably had hardships previously in their life.

And I would imagine that they also responded in a resilient way.

So there are these biochemical differences, which is why those people who have a genetic vulnerability or predisposition to develop psychiatric illness, this event will trigger that in them.

Yeah, you’d mentioned that earlier, that if you were just living on the threshold of that, it could be a precipitating force in the symptoms.

Whoa.

That’s funny.

And then people, I was just gonna say people who already were experiencing depression and anxiety, again, this can exacerbate that.

So this situation, not the actual virus, but the quarantine and the results of the virus, how we’re handling, can expose what’s already there, kind of pull the covers back, you know?

Exactly.

Yeah, I liken it to, you know, how they say like in vino veritas, right?

Like when you drink, it usually exacerbates whatever emotion was already there before.

So if you drink when you’re depressed, you’ll get more depressed.

If you drink when you’re celebrating, you’ll be more, you know, exuberant.

And so this is kind of like that.

It’s enhancing what was there before.

Yeah, like before the quarantine, I was working, approaching an A cup.

And now that the quarantine has been for eight weeks, I am a full B cup.

These are Corona boobs that I have.

Man boobs.

Yes, Corona moobs.

Moobs, man boobs.

Do you know, the other interesting, what I think, this is my prediction, is that as things start opening up gradually, as they’re gonna do in New York little by little, it might actually increase people’s anxiety because the uncertainty, like right now we’re sort of in our bubbles, we’re kind of protected, we’re allowed to just stay in our homes.

As we sort of gradually go out and maybe send our kids to school in a kind of socially distanced way, the uncertainty is going to increase.

The anxiety, I think, will increase in people.

And there might be more, even more mental health issues in that, in that new world.

Is that because when you’re home, you know, you’re not, and everyone has been with you for three weeks, you know, you’re not going to catch it.

But once society begins to open, there’s that risk that you now absorb by just rejoining society.

Mm-hmm.

And just for those who are not Latin fluent, I’m obligated to say that Heather’s phrase, in vino veritas, translates to in wine there is truth.

So Heather, specifically, they’re talking about wine, not beer or gin or whiskey.

Yeah, just wine.

Because it doesn’t work with Jack Daniels.

You never drink Jack Daniels and tell anybody how you really feel.

So I just want to clarify what you said.

When you drink, it’s when you drink wine that we tell the truth.

Yeah.

Well, on my mug, it says Veritas.

Maybe that’s why I thought of it.

Truth.

Just truth.

It’s also the motto of Harvard University.

I covered that up because that seems a little bit obnoxious.

Oh, it is a Harvard mug.

It is a Harvard mug.

That’s funny.

Here, let me get my mug from Philadelphia Community College.

I’m so obnoxious.

Terrible.

And by the way, just a quick aside, because in vino veritas, which of course means, you know, what we just talked about, I think is incorrect.

I believe that alcohol can affect your brain to the point where you would do things that you otherwise would never do or say.

You’re not telling the truth.

As a matter of fact, your brain has been altered by a substance that actually alters your reality at the same time.

And so you can get drunk enough where you’ll tell somebody that you hate them and you don’t hate them.

You know, I bet differ.

Hold on.

Back down.

We’re going to have a smackdown.

Wait, wait, wait.

Before you go, Heather, I got to say, Chuck, Chuck, thanks, Dad, for that advice.

When did you become a dad?

What I would say to that is that we do have these unconscious impulses and desires and things that our prefrontal cortex is normally suppressing.

When you drink, it decreases activation of the prefrontal cortex.

It lowers your suppression.

So what was actually there under the surface you might not even yourself have been aware of is lingering under the surface that comes out.

In that dreams, you know, sometimes you have this weird dream.

He’s like, why did I dream about that person?

I don’t really like them.

But maybe somewhere inside of you, you do like them.

So I think that you’re even it’s even revealing the truth to yourself that you didn’t know about that’s normally suppressed.

See, and I’m still going to say I’m going to push back on that, Heather, but we don’t have time.

Oh, oh, oh.

We’re going to take it outside.

So Chuck, you’re saying you don’t have time for you, the comedian, to argue with a mental health professional about why she’s wrong.

I’m not saying she’s wrong, I’m just saying she’s not considering the whole picture, even though she went to Harvard.

But I will say this, I will say this, you probably, the behaviors that you engage in, you wouldn’t do in your normal life.

Normally you would not, there are certain things you do that you normally wouldn’t do because they’re suppressed.

But when you release that inhibition, that they all come out.

There you go.

Yeah.

Drinking exposes your lizard brain.

That’s what she said.

I just, I just summarized what she said.

But yeah.

However, I’m going a little bit deeper in saying that, that you can, you can drink enough where you would do something that you would just never even consider.

Right, right, right.

That’s the high, high, high levels of alcohol that most people never get.

And see, I’m speaking from experience, Heather.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Next question.

Next question.

Next question.

This is from, oh, by the way, the last question that you, I mean, in your last description and you talked about people becoming more anxious, that was, let me just acknowledge that Emsky Art from Patreon had an upcoming question that says, I just want to know if we’ll be seeing a wave of agoraphobia once we are reintroduced to society.

So you actually answered this question in the last statements that you made, just want to point that out.

So just remind us what agoraphobia is, Heather.

So agoraphobia is a fear of leaving the house.

And I do think that that will be an issue for a lot of people going forward because of the uncertainty.

So even when things do open up, it’s not like people are suddenly, well, maybe in certain places they will flood or, you know, the restaurants and bars, but there’ll be a lot of a segment of people who still will self-isolate because of that uncertainty and the fear and because there’s still not a treatment or a vaccine.

So I think there will be an increase in agoraphobia.

And if I remember correctly, the agora is an open space in ancient Rome where people gathered and if you feared the open space and people, you were agoraphobic.

I think that’s the origin of that.

Correct.

Yeah.

And that’s like some people who are afraid of being in malls or like big open spaces.

That’s kind of where it originated because they would have a panic attack in the middle of it.

So they just stayed home.

And yeah.

It’s like the opposite of claustrophobia.

It’s terrible when you have both that really.

Oh, that was great.

Nothing to joke about.

No, it isn’t.

It’s very, very terrible.

It’s terrible.

Yes.

Here we go.

Frankie Swanky from Facebook says this, hello Neil and Dr.

Berlin, I’m coming to you for some advice.

When the lockdown began, I was going through a breakup.

My friends were telling me I need to get the hell out of my apartment, but now that’s impossible.

What is some good advice to maintain a healthy state of mind during all of this?

PS, I use StarTalk as a mental stimulation.

You guys are great.

Okay.

Whoa, excellent.

He partially answered the question himself, actually.

Well, this is a problem.

So part of the treatment for depression or like, let’s say you’re getting over a breakup, is what we call behavioral activation.

It’s the sort of gold standard treatment.

So if somebody is depressed and they lack motivation, you actually like push them to go out and do activities to break that cycle.

Now we’re all stuck in the house.

So our worlds have shrank, but we can still create these kind of mini worlds within them.

So you can create novelty with things you have around you, right?

So he mentioned, like I use StarTalk for my mental stimulation, right?

If you normally always play a crossword puzzle, like switch to, you know, some other mental activity, learn to play chess.

The brain likes novelty and change and that releases dopamine, which is a feel good chemical.

So even if our worlds are small, you know, you can’t jet set around the world now and go to fun parties, but you can find activities within our smaller worlds that are novel, that will give you that bit of dopamine.

So that is like a behavioral activation.

We just have to be more creative in that endeavor.

It’s not as easy as, you know, it’s not all provided for us in terms of entertainment.

So that would be my bit of advice.

Yeah.

And connect with people.

So, Heather, in your professional practice, did you just say you’re going to start recommending StarTalk?

Did she just say that, Chuck?

Did she just say that?

I think that’s what I heard.

That’s what I heard, too.

Right.

So, Sid, just listen to StarTalk or you’ll be fine for months on end, months on end.

Nice.

Well, we’ve got quite the back catalog, too.

So we’ve been at this for a while.

Just my episodes, though.

But the rest, you know, excellent.

Okay, Chuck, we got time for one more, I think.

This is Pilar Vada from Facebook.

And Pilar says this.

Hi, I’m a big fan of chiming in from Spain.

Espana.

Espana.

Do you think that the lack of sunlight and being indoors will result in some mental health issues?

I definitely feel it.

Just to be clear, in New York City, where there are a lot of tall buildings and there’s not much sunlight vectoring into your place because outside your window is another building, you could be in broad daylight but still be in darkness.

And I presume if you live in a private home somewhere in the suburbs or in a rural place, daytime is still daytime to you.

So, really, we’re talking about people who live in small, confined places with not much windowing, right?

So, tell us about that, the role of the sunlight.

Absolutely.

I mean, sunlight can affect your mental health.

We know that actually one of the treatments for depression is to, if people are not getting enough sunlight or vitamin D, is to get one of those sun lamps just to provide that they sell those where you can put it by your desk and just to have that natural light that affects our neurochemistry.

Wait, wait, just to be clear, that light is not just another light.

It’s a light that has the spectrum that matches that of the sun.

That’s right.

And so that way you’re perhaps you’re duping your body into thinking that it’s sunlight that’s exposed to you and not just some incandescent or fluorescent bulb.

Exactly.

Because we’ve evolved with that spectrum of light over many years.

And so that affects our sleep wake cycle.

So if you ever had jet lag, you know, that can really mess you up and it can actually make you more more irritable and anxious, right?

So it’s affecting our sleep cycles as well.

So you want to make sure you have that natural light, which sends a signal to the brain like, okay, it’s daytime now, you should be awake.

Because that’s another issue is that, like, even though we’re all inside that to keep a regular schedule, to have times, you know, where you’re up during the daytime and sleep at night, unless, of course, you have a job that is, you know, doesn’t allow that.

But it’s important for our mental health to having natural sleep cycles.

But the other thing I want to mention is that being indoors, you have a lack of stimulation, right?

So you habituate to the walls after you see them day after day because it’s not novel.

And so what the brain does, we know this from sensory deprivation studies, is that it will begin to stimulate itself.

When it lacks stimulation, you’ll start to hallucinate.

And then people also are reporting having more vivid dreams at night.

And not just that, they’re also their anxiety seeps into their dreams.

So people are having corona type dreams.

For instance, I’ve had a dream where I all of a sudden I’m in a mall and doing something.

And then all of a sudden I realized, wait, I shouldn’t be around all these people.

I got to get out of here.

What am I doing here?

Get away from me.

And I start running out of the mall, you know, so your brain suddenly realizes, you know, wait, I shouldn’t be…

That’s a separate podcast inside Heather’s head.

It’s like being John Malkovich.

So we got to take a break before we go to our third and final segment.

This is StarTalk in the Coronaverse Mental Health Edition.

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We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Coronavirus, Mental Health Edition.

And I’ve got with me Chuck Nice, as always, Jeff.

Hey, hey.

Tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

And Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, friend of StarTalk, therapist herself, based at Mount Sinai.

Heather, always good to have you.

And you’ve got a social media footprint.

Your handle is what?

On Twitter and how about Instagram?

Are you there?

I am indeed.

And I believe it’s the same.

Heather underscore Berlin.

You believe it’s the same, okay?

I think that that is the same.

It is the same.

Yes.

Yeah, I didn’t know that Twitter handles were belief systems.

Weren’t the same.

And that Heather underscore Berlin on Instagram started getting like questions, it’s like, please tell me what I need to do to feel better during this pandemic.

And it’s just some woman in the city of Berlin, Germany, you know.

Oh my God, wouldn’t that be great?

Just like, all these Americans, they keep asking me these questions.

So we got another face in the mix here.

We’ve got Gary O’Reilly, Gary.

Welcome.

You just crossed over.

You’re my co-host, along with Chuck, for StarTalk Sports Edition.

Yeah, just a little blindside rum, just snuck in behind.

Came around the back door.

And we thought we might devote this segment to mental health in the coronavirus, in the in the coronavirus, but as it might affect athletes.

And we’re not seeing athletics at this point because seasons have been canceled or delayed.

And so we might want to know what effect that has.

So you have a question for Heather?

I do, and thank you.

Right, while athletes can exercise, they can do star jumps and press ups, push ups in the lounge.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Wait, I must interrupt.

Go on.

Okay, we didn’t just put a British accent on here for the hell of it.

There’s a reason why you are my co-host on Sports Edition.

Gary, you are a former professional athlete, professional soccer star in the UK.

Thank you, yes, I was.

And if you were to lock me up in the Coronaverse, I would probably be talking to someone like Heather Berlin very rarely.

Often.

So while athletes can do all these push-ups and step-ups in their own lounge, they can’t be competitive.

And how are athletes, Heather, please, particularly those that are involved in ball sport games, retain that super fast mental processing speed that makes them, on occasion, just phenomenal.

And if you’re locked out of your sport for this amount of time, are you gonna look at a degradation of that kind of mental speed, or actually does it stick with you, or does it, how long does it take?

Right, so look, I mean, a lot of people, especially if you play competitive sports, the not having colleagues with you to kind of help motivate you, right?

And which speeds up, which gives us the kind of, we need a goal to kind of speed up your mental processes.

However, there are other ways that you can keep that knife sharp, so to speak, right?

So it’s not just the physical activity, but if you can engage in competitive mental tasks, I mean, something as simple as video games that involve competition, they have these where you can wear a headset and talk to the other people who you’re playing with, right?

So let’s say a video, a soccer game that you can play with other people, because to the brain, there isn’t that much difference between, say, virtual reality space and real space.

You can very easily trick the brain.

So I would recommend, if you want to keep sharp, to play these sort of competitive sports virtually.

And that will engage the same sort of mental circuits that you would engage if you were actually physically playing.

That’s interesting.

You know, Heather, I once hosted a spin-off of Nova, PBS Nova, called Nova Science Now.

And one of our episodes was on the retaining mental acuity.

And I was trained on a task.

It was some kind of an arcade game.

And there I was.

And I got better while I kept doing it.

But I did it long enough.

So it was really kind of in my head.

Then I took a break.

I actually took a nap.

And then I came back and I was better than at any time that I had left off.

And the analysis was that my brain kept at that exercise because I’d gotten so embedded in it that I ended up improving not only my speed, my reflexes and my acuity.

So this is an interesting world, the brain that you study.

Yeah, it’s called consolidation.

And so that’s why actually when you’re studying for an exam or practicing a physical activity, sleep is so important.

Breaks are so important because you have the period of time when your brain is sort of intaking the information, it’s learning and learning and learning, it’s sort of acquiring the information.

But then you need during the rest periods are just as important because there are other neural processes that consolidate it.

And we do find this after people sleep, there’s this spike in performance, they do better.

And then after a while, you know, fatigue sets in and the rest and you can start to drain off.

So learning, that’s also for an exam.

Cramming for exam is not great.

You wanna space it out, you’ll do better on the exam because you have these periods of consolidation.

But let me get back to Gary’s point because he was specifically referencing what role a competitor has on your own urge to excel rather than just people urging, you know, cheering you on.

Right?

So that was a different thing.

It’s why anyone would set a world record.

They just ran or performed better than they ever have in their life, better than anyone ever has in that moment.

How many world records are ever set by someone doing something on their own?

I bet near zero.

So in Gary’s case, so Gary, what I wonder is if you can train the mind to have a mental acuity, Heather, does that really translate into biokinetic acuity or speeds?

Just training the mind.

To train the mind, can that make your body faster?

Is that, Gary, is that a fair part of your question?

I think, you know what?

I would, sorry Heather, cause now I’m taking your role in this conversation.

I would put that under the file confidence.

If I believe that I have this confidence that I’m sharp mentally, my, there’s a wrestling term, get the head and the body will follow.

Neil, remember that one?

I think this is another example of that.

Yeah, I think it comes down also to motivation.

It’s motivation and then belief, right?

So, we talk about self-fulfilling prophecies, right?

If you think you’re going to fail, you’ll be more likely to fail.

You kind of psych yourself out, right?

If you think you’re gonna succeed, that’s why the visualization, especially for athletes, is so important.

Like, I’m gonna make that goal.

I can see it.

I’m gonna do it.

So, it’s that the body will follow as long as it’s trained and it actually knows what to do.

So, a lot of it is getting yourself out of the way, getting your doubts and self-doubt out of the way to allow your body to do what it was trained to do.

But if it’s not physically trained to do that, or let’s say you’ve been in quarantine and you haven’t actually practiced for a while, you still won’t…

Even though you can have all the mental motivation in the world, you won’t be able to actually enact that if your muscles haven’t stayed up to par, let’s say.

So I think you need, obviously you need both.

It’s not one or the other, but the point is that if you’re at home and you’re an athlete and you’re practicing your physical, keeping up with your physical activities, it’s just as important to also keep up with that mental activity, with the competitive sports, the competitive games, let’s say.

And the drive and the motivation that comes from many different places.

Some people have internal motivation for their own reasons.

Some people need the competitor to have that level of motivation.

So that will vary.

So Gary, you have more questions for Heather.

I have a mind full of questions.

But we’re going to pick just this one for Heather.

Now that certain leagues are coming back, we’re sort of mid-May here and the German Soccer League, the Bundesliga is the first out of the gates with games starting in empty stadium.

NASCAR will return later this month.

So in my mind, and Heather, please, because this is an interesting one for me, will athletes react differently, A, within the race as drivers, but for instance, soccer or basketball, how are they going to react to being in an empty stadium and having no reaction from the crowds?

Imagine I do the most incredible trick or move, and then normally I get an instantaneous, wow, this rush of energy comes to particularly personally to me.

That’s no longer there.

How are athletes going to react to that emptiness?

And Heather, before you begin, Chuck, the same question applies to you.

What’s it like being in a nightclub?

Not that this will happen, but just so you can imagine it, you got a stand-up routine in a nightclub and nobody is at any of the cocktail tables.

Does that work for you?

Well, for me, yeah, it works because nobody’s laughing when there are a full anyway.

It stays the same.

Silence is silence.

Silence is silence.

Believe it or not, I’m still doing comedy shows.

They do them on Zoom now.

And we get like 100, 200 people that chime in to these comedy shows to check out comedians just trying out material and doing stuff.

And, you know, it’s for me personally, my jokes, and people say this too.

They’re like, oh, you laugh at your own jokes.

And I’m like, yeah, that’s because I’m funny.

So how about you suck it, OK, because I don’t care that comedians aren’t supposed to laugh at their jokes.

I do most of my comedy for me, believe it or not.

Yeah, so again, similar phenomena, I’m thinking about these late night talk shows that are now doing these monologues without the audience feedback.

And even somebody who’s observing it, watching it, it feels a little awkward, right, because of the timing.

So we often go through this process of, it’s very kind of Darwinian of like performance feedback revision, right?

And so we’re performing and then we’re looking for that feedback, whether positive or negative, that then helps us kind of revise our performance.

And now we can either get it from the players that we’re playing with.

But a lot of the audience input helps.

Let’s say you’re running down the field to get a goal.

And now the audience is cheering and cheering and cheering you on.

That’s going to make you run even faster.

And that we call that in psychological terms, social facilitation.

So we find that certain people’s performance is enhanced simply by being observed by people.

But that depends on what the task is.

So that’s if it’s a simple task like running.

As the task gets more complex, then you get the opposite effect.

You get what we call social inhibition, which is that your performance can get worse if you’re being observed, depending on the complex, if a task is very complex.

So it’s a mixed bag.

But I think in general with sports, the audience feedback usually facilitates, right?

It gives you more motivation to keep running or go that extra mile.

And we are going to lose that.

I feel like the sports are going to be slightly less aggressive, perhaps, slightly less competitive, because there’s not that motivational factor of the live audience viewing it.

So the truly competitive player is going to flourish in that scenario.

Somebody like a Tom Brady who doesn’t care who’s watching.

I just need to kill you.

I need to beat you at all.

A Michael Jordan type.

I just heard a story of Michael Jordan in practice.

A player on his team blocked his shot.

And then for the rest of the practice, Michael Jordan actually dribbled around people to go to that player in practice to embarrass him.

A player like that will flourish under the circumstances you just said.

And also, actually, there are certain players who, and usually, I mean, people who are professional sports players have figured out ways to overcome this, but certain players have a bit of social anxiety.

So actually, you know, performing in front of an audience is harder for them.

They have to learn how to block it out and focus.

And so they might also do better without the audience there as a distractor.

So it is a mixed bag, you know, to playing on the player, how internally motivated they are and how much they’re impacted by the audience.

So we got to call it quits there.

So Heather, Gary, Chuck, we’re going to are going to pick you up over in Sports Edition.

And in the meantime, I’ll just say goodbye to the three of you in this Cosmic Queries StarTalk in the Coronaverse Mental Health Edition.

And like I said, Heather, it’s always great to have you.

All right.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, getting you to keep looking up.