Adjustment Disorder

Life is a stage on which every individual is expected to adjust and adapt to the role given to them. Life is like a cyclone which when comes, throws challenges at the face of a human which he has to face to emerge out much stronger and wiser. What if one is not able to adjust to the changing seasons of life, the various scenarios, emotions, moods, places, etc? This article is thus dedicated to the less stigmatizing yet serious condition of Adjustment Disorder.

Adjustment disorder is considered a mild condition and subjected to less stigma in abnormal psychology. But to understand it as less severe and just leave it to that might be a serious blunder. This is because a simple adjustment issue with place, people, objects, emotions, etc when ignored, can, in turn, lead to more severe issues such as mood disorders, depression, etc. This disorder is marked by low mood, helplessness, a lack of interest in events or people one is surrounded with.

The current pandemic would be an ideal space to explore the conditions of this disorder for it would not be wrong to say so considering the magnitude of the circumstances we were thrown in. There has come a complete shift in our lifestyles and it is rather surprising as to how quickly everyone adjusted to the severe circumstances. But to know whether this is an adjustment to the pandemic conditions or a forcefully driven survival strategy is tricky and yet to be known on a deeper level. It can be generally observed that to deal with social isolation, loneliness, and frustration, people owned up various coping mechanisms such as denial, trying to understand the present pandemic through memes, rationalization, etc. What seemed to be a temporary phase of life extended itself to almost a year full of anxieties, vulnerabilities, and anger. Education, work, family and friends meetings, parties, and whatever we can name under the sun shifted online; making it a new yet unbearable reality of everybody’s life.

Education is every child’s right. It is considered to be the foundation of all achievements in life and actually helps in personality shaping and development. When education had to be inevitably shifted online; what seemed to be an attempt at adjustment by the concerned parties such as students, parents, and teachers can actually be seen as a helpless attempt at wanting to normalize things to the best. Making education go digital to match the testing times of the day has been really commendable but the issue crops up when we think of those possibly bright students who could have really benefited but could not do so due to lack of resources and poor economic conditions. If one throws just a glance at the number of student suicides this year; what we see on the surface is the cause of lack of resources but deep down, we are intelligent enough to understand that this lack is, in reality, a failure at adjustment. This failure is not inherent but it is a forced way of life by society. Sadly today, be it work or academics; everything is defined and driven by the absence or presence of sufficient resources. The hard conditions faced in the education sector were also faced in the professional sector. Due to the hard times brought forth by the pandemic, people either lost their jobs: their means of livelihood, or those looking for employment had no options whatsoever. In this sense, if we are to understand, each and everyone was forced to adjust, adapt and live a life contrary to what they did before the pandemic, thus inducing opportunities for issues of mental health to crop up and it would not be surprising that adjustment issues or more appropriately adjustment disorders might just be one of them. Not to forget the possible scenario of people eventually adjusting to the new life of work/study from home only to suddenly bounce back to the again never-ending demands of productivity shortly.