It is very interesting how all the media are focusing on people's physical health (which is useless, because it is enough to apply the SIR model to know what's going to happen) and little about mental health.
Moreover, little is said about how to protect one's mental health, and it is no coincidence that in Italy there are three million chronic depressed people, with a figure of not yet chronic chronic depressed people calculated around ten million.
The truth is that mental illnesses are not contagious in the viral sense, but are toxic . Toxic means that exposing one's mind to their words, to their works of art, to their music, can cause intoxication.
Intoxications that can replicate the disease (as happens to depression that tends to replicate) or can cause other diseases (as happens to psychopaths that induce depression) or narcissists (which induce depression or psychopathy).
The important thing, therefore, is to do your own mental prophylaxis. In particular, it is necessary to recognize well who you are dealing with, and take action immediately.
Diagnosing mental illness in others is undoubtedly a difficult thing. On the contrary, measuring the effects that people have on ourselves is much simpler. So, I could make a little vademecum. First we define contact: any relationship that involves the transport of emotions , or emotional involvement. So also Social Networks, music, books, telephone calls, letters, newspapers, blogs, news programs.
- If contact with someone makes you feel insignificant, incompetent, incapable, canceled, and you feel like taking a step backwards to your detriment, (firing yourself, and the like) you have probably met a narcissist.
- If in contact with someone you feel involved, you feel empathy towards that person, you would like to comfort him, but you feel tired, hopeless, and you are sleepy, you have met a depressed person.
- If in contact with someone you feel the victim of unfair judgments, you feel suffering for words addressed to you, your words are systematically misunderstood, then you have just met a psychopath.
In these cases, prophylaxis comes into play. Don't hesitate to cut bridges with that person. It is as if she were sick with the plague: do not approach, do not talk to us, avoid dialogue, treat them as plague and isolate them .
Exactly how it is done with a quarantine. Because coronavirus will pass, mental illnesses normally leave after-effects for a lifetime. And they never completely go away.
Avoid getting intoxicated, at any cost.
Mental hygiene is just as important as health care.
