Een reactie van Jeanny Severijns
Jeanny Severijns – Sweikhuizen – Netherlands – Born: 04-07-1948
In my childhood I faced various forms of child abuse: long-term sexual abuse, mental neglect, fysical violence, forced child labor and bullying. At 21 years old I was referred for the first time to a psychiatrist and a little later I came into contact with ‘the Office for Life and Family problems’, the current Mental Health Care. I worked in the administration, studied social siences at the University of Amsterdam and was admitted to psychiatric institutions for 10 years. At the moment things are going well. I live independently, have a PGB (Budget for personal use to pay my care providers) and I am a board member of ISPS Low Lands. COVID 19: MY STORY It is hardly a year that COVID-19 is in the world. Much changed socially and economically. The future is uncertain. We hope for the end of the Corona virus but we do not see it. When will there be is a new vaccine, when will COVID-19 be under control, what happens after? Will there be a new normal, or do we go back to live as it was before? Did humanity learn from this last pandemic?
To be honest I do not know and I am not worried about it. For me it is an uncertainty like many others in live. Tomorrow I can be involved in a road accident, next week it is possible that my doctor tells me that I have a deadly disease, or next month there can be a big war also in our country. Like my mother teached me, I try to take life as it comes. At this moment I have two professional helpers. A psychiatric nurse and a caregiver. Weekly they are coming to my home. Now I see better than before that it is not obvious. They both keep coming and now I am more gratefull than before. Further I noticed that mental health institutions make more use of social media. I guess that for instance Zoom will also be partly used in future. In our community there are people acting against all rules of the gouvernement. They organise big parties on the beach or in the bushes. They know it is forbidden nowadays and I think it is for good reasens. I regret the behavior of these anarchistic groups. As much as I can see our community did not change. In my neighborhood I do not see more frustation, anger, racism, isolation or conspirancy theorie.
For years I am not a person with a big social netwerk. It is evedent that I see less of these things than other people do. Social interaction has changed visibly. We do not meet in associations. Recently I have won a price in two different stories-contests, but the meetings of the award ceremony were cancelled. We have to ring our parish administration each time we want to attend Mass. Last week a man of this administration has contracted the COVID-19. A few days ago he rang everyone who used to attend to Mass. The GGD (Municipal Health Service) has told him to do so. I mis the contacts I had before the pandemic, but it is not a big problem. In normal times I have not so much fysical contact and nowadays this contact is even less. I do not see it as a problem. In my own neighbourhood I do not see positive aspects. I live in a little village with 625 inhabitants. Most of the things are the same like it was before, but we follow the rules given by our Gouvernement.
In the beginning of the outbreak in the Netherlands I saw a little positieve change – see my first story. But that has all reverted to pre-Corona times. On TV I can see there are initiatives to help people in weaker positions. Our gouvernement gives a lot of money to companies that have run into financial difficulties. The only positive aspects where I can tell about, are those that everybody can watch on TV.