Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
About 138,400 adults in Contra Costa County say their mental health was not good on at least 14 of the past 30 days, according to the newest county estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 15.3% of the county’s adults, up from 11.5% in the CDC’s estimates from before the pandemic, a jump of about a third.
Contra Costa isn’t alone. All 58 California counties are higher now than they were before the pandemic.
In Martinez, the rate is 15.8%, a little above the county as a whole, and 21.4% of adults in the city have been told by a doctor or other health professional that they have depression. The numbers vary widely across the county. The rate runs highest in Bay Point, at 19.1%, followed by San Pablo at 18.5% and Antioch at 18.4%, and lowest in Orinda, at 11.8%.
The CDC calls this frequent mental distress. It isn’t a diagnosis. It describes people who have spent half the month or more dealing with stress, worry or low mood, most of them still going to work, paying the bills and looking after their families.
The same CDC data shows 35.1% of Contra Costa adults sleep less than seven hours a night and 23.7% get no physical activity outside of work, two habits that tend to slip when someone is struggling. The county also has fewer clubs, civic groups and other places for people to connect than California overall, 5.5 per 10,000 residents against 6.2 statewide, according to County Health Rankings & Roadmaps.
Olander Earthworks, a Portland, Oregon, company that makes screen-free products and researches how adults handle stress, surveyed 121 mental health and allied practitioners about what helps. Of those, 82% said adults have fewer chances than they used to for unstructured, screen-free activity, and 69% of those who use hands-on activities with clients said people talk more openly once they get going. As one practitioner put it, “Having something to do with their hands made it easier to talk.” The survey is small, so it reflects those practitioners, not the whole field.
Around Martinez, that can look like a walk along the waterfront, a class at a community center or a standing coffee with a friend. It won’t replace professional care, but it can help people start talking.
Anyone in crisis can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, at any time.
