In taking a look at the slow-burning SHTF that we’re in right now, I thought it would be strategic to examine mental health and the crucial information to get before things go all out SHTF.
My rationale is that mental health can have a much larger impact on whether you survive or not than even your physical health. Once existing medical services are gone, they are gonzo…so you will be on your own. Everyone in your group will be dealing with off-the-scale stress. It is not unexpected that some people may be more affected than others. The information in this article will give you some things to contemplate, a resource, and some ideas for non-medical solutions.
Be An Observer of Yourself and Others
If you get connected with a group for survival, it would pay to be a keen observer of these folks that your life is depending on. Attitudes, habits, and emotions are just a few things to look for. Early intervention is much more likely to be effective. Once someone is in a severe depression, for example, more intense treatment may be required that is no longer available.
Here is a checklist from Mental Health America that screens for depression. Take a look at the questions and get a feel for what changes in behavior you might be looking for, either in yourself or those around you. You are not likely going to be able to ask your friend to fill it in online during SHTF. It’s worth considering what you need to do to have this information at your fingertips in the future.
SHTF Mental Health Skills
In an all-out SHTF, you will be faced with survival every day. There may be little time available. This workbook focuses on drug-free things you can do to improve depression. These activities fall under three categories: Reactivating Your Life, Thinking Realistically, and Solving Problems.
Of course, in a SHTF world, this will look much different from our day-to-day life. You can read this workbook and draw on your imagination and Selco’s writings to brainstorm how to support mental health in SHTF. If audiobooks are more your style, you can download audio files of this resource here.
Other Non-Drug Options
There are many non-drug options to improve mental health generally, or depression specifically. One such option is food. In a SHTF, your diet may be suffering. You may observe signs of mental health stress in yourself and a group member. Maybe it’s time to get some higher-quality food from the black market. Or adjust your schedule to go fishing?
Exercise is another example. Maybe you had duties to collect water that allowed you to roam a bit and get some exercise, even though it was stressful. Lately, you have been doing all the guard duty and not moving much. You notice changes in how you feel. You can do a couple of things. Should you negotiate with the group to change up your duties? Is there any other way to get some exercise in your compound?
Foraging for Solutions
I wrote an article about eating weeds a while back. I mentioned stinging nettles in that article. That is a highly nutritive weed! If your nutrition is poor, it could help you a lot. I know of an herbalist with a great diet who still takes some stinging nettles daily.
What about St. John’s Wort? This is a highly respected anti-depressant in Europe that is gaining respect here in North America. Does it grow in your bioregion? Can you identify it? If you don’t have all of the equipment to make a tincture, do you know how to take it? These are all questions that you want to be able to answer NOW.
St. John’s Wort has been found to be equal or to exceed the effectiveness of other pharmaceutical SSRIs on the market. It is calming and has been used to treat “depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder” and can also be used as a “sedative and for insomnia,” according to herbalist Dr. Patrick Jones in his book The HomeGrown Herbalist. In my own practice, I have found that St. John’s Wort tincture is incredibly soothing on itchy rashes, too. That is a lot of goodness packed into one plant.
Meditation – Before and After
Well-known programs have been drawing on meditative practices to help mental health for years. One well-known example is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. This was offered through my local health center a while ago, and I took it. It was secular and provided many strategies for stress reduction. This program has been documented by extensive research to be beneficial. As a preparation and to increase quality of life in these stressful days, this would be a worthwhile investment. Here’s a more detailed description of the program.
Why bother now? While it is true that meditation and mindfulness have a healing impact on mental health, they are also preventative. Even if all you have is a few minutes a day during SHTF, spending it doing an already well-established meditation practice could make all the difference. Remember Selco’s principle of “good enough” and apply it to your SHTF day. You don’t want to be trying to learn a meditation practice while on the run from a hostile enemy, do you? Yeah, that might be too late to receive the full benefits!
SHTF Mental Health: What Do You Need to Know NOW?
Once the doctors are gone, it will be too late. What knowledge about mental health do you think is most important to learn now? What are your best preps for supporting mental health in an all-out SHTF? Please tell us in the comments section.
Editor’s Book Recommendation: Mind 4 Survival: How to Face Any Crisis, Minimize Unwanted Struggle, and Live Your Best Possible Life
About Rowan
Rowan O’Malley is a fourth-generation Irish American who loves all things green: plants (especially shamrocks), trees, herbs, and weeds! She challenges herself daily to live her best life and to be as fit, healthy, and prepared as possible.
5 Responses
This country is having a mental health crisis, far larger than it has ever had before. Drugs for depression and anxiety only help about 20% while the remainder are made worse. Instead of recognizing the side-effects of these drugs, our confirmation-biased physicians believe this must be “underlying disease” and either increase the dose, add other drugs, or both. This is at least part of the reason why leftists are behaving with such flagrant insanity. What will they be like when food shortages hit? When the grid fails? If they’re rioting now while Trump is fixing the economy, what will they do when/if it fails? I don’t want to think about it, but IMO, they’ll mostly act like mad dogs.
I’ve thought about the stress involved as I’ve experienced several months of being in an area being hit by missiles multiple times a day for months. That’s stressful! It’s been interesting to see how people react. For sure everyone deals with it differently.
I know I personally felt exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to even take advantage of offers to stay across town in a safer place for a few nights let alone travel hours to another part of the country that was not being attacked. I thought I had a toothache but really it was due to my muscles in my jaw being so tight. I’m not sure how I could have prevented this nor how to handle it better in the future. It has definitely opened my eyes.
Sometimes I worry when I read a lot of prepper stuff because I don’t think many people are aware of the extreme mental/emotional stress they will be under whether in a disaster situation or because they’re in a war zone of one sort or another.
Although you just briefly talked of your experience, you have many stories to tell because if it. This would be of help to so many people who never expect to live through such things. Selco’s experiences have helped others. There are very real dangers in the world, and more will follow. I’ve wondered how, as someone almost 70, I can calmly help my family through a shtf event. I can prep and have many things we need, and we can live off the land where we are. But emotional stress from the oldest to the youngest worries me. Suicides scare me, I don’t want anyone I love to take that escape. Maybe one day you can share more.
I don’t know where you are, but Israel is always on my mind, in my heart. How they have survived missiles coming at them for so many years has made me think… how do they live that way? And then October 7. Hamas wants to do it again, and they want to do it to the US too. I fear they are already in our country… waiting.
May God bless you.
Thanks! Yes I’m in the north of Israel. And yes, if anything I can share would be of use to those who come to this website and their loved ones I’d be happy to. I think that as some such as Selco write, the moment you realize that these people really do want to kill you is a very sobering experience. When you realize that this is for real and it’s no longer prepper fiction. This sort of reality can take many forms but in all cases it’s life threatening, be it terrorists, gangs or whomever. I worry that so many preppers are so focused on their stores of goods, ammo supplies and all the rest but they are overlooking the emotional impact as written about here. And it’s interesting that this article has only garnered a few comments so far yet it’s so important.
It seems to me that even mentally healthy people might be advised to contemplate the isolation that could result from a SHTF scenario. Although I’ve lived in the mountains for ~25 years and like it overall, I’ve recently become even more physically isolated for the reason I’ll describe below.
When in early 2021, I read documentation of the horrific possible side effects of the COVID shots and that a person who has received a shot might unwittingly convey its contents (such as through shedding) to a person who hasn’t received any of the shots, I decided to minimize exposure to anyone who had taken any of them and to congregate only with people who hadn’t taken any of them. I’ve always enjoyed excellent health (I’m 65), and I’m not going to jeopardize this if I can help it. Consequently, I spend even more time by myself than I did before the COVID fiasco, and I’m comfortable with that. Sometimes my anger gets triggered at the evil acts that necessitated a decision on whether to isolate in this way, but the anger passes quickly.