ST SIMON THE APOSTLE, ROWVILLE

Disillusionment: So many have lost trust, in everyone and everything they once respected, even prized and treasured. Government and its services, banks, churches, even the police. They don’t know who to trust, or who has competence in their given areas of responsibility, and so their sense of personal security has suffered major damage. They know that “truth” and “trust” are very similar words, but that without the first, you can never have the other. Daily they hear “statistics” - but now have doubt as to whether those statistics are reliable, or just a “means to an end”. 

So they become disengaged, from others, even from society itself. They keep to themselves (not too difficult these days!). They speak only to those closest to them with whom they can quietly share their sadness, their sense of loss of so many critically important elements of their lives, valued and treasured elements which they never thought could be lost. Now they believe these are gone, perhaps forever. 

They’re not difficult people. They’re not rebels. They’re not disobedient or disloyal. But they would like to know “why” - the real reasons for decisions which are isolating them from many others, not just socially but mentally. 

They know heart disease (or “CVD” - cardiovascular disease) claims 18 million lives across the globe each year. Of these, around 30,000 occur in Australia, 25 per cent of all deaths here. So they want to know why CVD (not COVID), as the primary cause of death in Australia, fails to receive the attention, funding and research it deserves and needs. 

They don’t dispute the dangers of COVID-19, and readily comply with all reasonable measures to limit its spread. But as jobs are lost, businesses go bust, and more people are stressed beyond their capacity to manage life, they want and need to trust the people steering the “health ship”, telling us to “stay safe”. But that trust is not as readily found as it once was. And they’d like to know why the “health ship” has never stopped before now to fight heart disease, dementia and cancer, the cause of 75%
of deaths in Australia. 

And so they can easily become depressed. Not always in the clinical sense, but in living a sad, isolated, life, finding it difficult to get through another day. 

Sure, that’s not everyone, but sadly it describes more and more people. When the two “t’s” - “truth” and “trust” - are hard to find, the three “d’s”
- disillusionment, disengagement and depression
- can follow on very rapidly indeed. This “virus” can be highly contagious, and needs urgent attention from competent people who know how to address it.