“It’s a boundless pain”

illness, death and grief in the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The years between 2020 and 2022 led the world population to restlessness due to the health crisis resulting from the spread of the new coronavirus. In addition to physical symptoms, which can lead to death, this disease can also cause damage to mental health. Among the most affected people are the elderly. The risk of lethality is added to depression and anxiety that may already be related to the aging process and are ex- acerbated at this time. This quantitative-qualitative study analyzed the social impacts of the pandemic in its multiple dimensions and complexity, with an emphasis on social suffering, particularly on local responses to dealing with illness, contagion, death, its representations and funeral practices. For this purpose, the research was divided into two steps. In the first step, the Reduced Geriatric Depression Scale and the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory were applied to assess depressive and anxiety symptoms among sixty elderly people. In the second step, an ethnography was carried out through semi-structured interviews with those people who presented a score that indicated depression and/or anxiety. The interlocutors of this study showed how illness, death and grief have been experienced, when loneliness and the silencing of pain are the keynote of coping with the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:
Mental health. Death. Grief. Covid-19 pandemic.

Photos: Eunice Barbosa dos Santos & Maria Helena Gomes do Nascimento