How coronavirus travel restrictions impact your mental health, and an expert’s five tips for how to safeguard it
- Families in Hong Kong and elsewhere are struggling with uncertainty about when they can travel overseas to see loved ones or have a vacation as rules change
- A psychologist who is seeing rising cases of stress and burnout and symptoms of depression has some advice about staying in touch with loved ones, and self-care
Cat Rüst and her husband, Stefan, spend hours every day in Hong Kong monitoring websites for the latest updates on travel restrictions. With three of their four children overseas at boarding school and university, managing the kids’ travel over the summer is proving a fraught logistical challenge.
“It’s incredibly stressful, every day you’ve got to solve a new problem. What’s today’s battle plan? You wake up and something has changed, or this vaccine won’t work in this country,” says Cat Rüst, a working mother.
She is now in Britain and, even before flights from the country were banned, was reluctant to return and undergo three weeks in quarantine – so the Rüsts have been doing their best to ensure she isn’t left stranded.
“These are rules which, while totally logical from the government’s perspective, are very distressing from a family perspective. The bit that’s most stressful is you feel you don’t control your family,” says Cat Rüst, whose job in fintech has her firmly tied to Hong Kong at the moment.