Few things make us consider our own mortality more than a pandemic. The nightly news, newspaper front pages, and mournful posts on social media serve as constant reminders that illness and death are all around us. In normal times, death is something we try not to think about. During pandemic times, it’s hard to think about anything else.

Last month, I wrote about grief and loss. I talked about how the death of someone you love affects your mental well-being and offered tips on how to grieve in a healthy and mindful way. But COVID-19 forces us to consider another kind of death as well: our own.

A July Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll[i] found that 53% of adults in the U.S. “reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the coronavirus,” a 21% increase from when the same question was asked in March. According to a May 4 article in the Washington Post, “The coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis,”[ii] “A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 percent increase in April compared with the same time last year” and Talkspace, an online therapy company, “reported a 65 percent jump in clients.”