COVID-19 and mental health: How one New Orleans student ‘found her way back’ and pursued healing
Djuané Taylor lived with depression before the pandemic, but the isolation of online school was more intense than anything she’d ever experienced before.
By Mally Welch
This profile is part of The Lost Year, a Lede New Orleans series documenting the stories of local K-12 students and educators as they return to in-person classes amid a pandemic. The series was written and recorded by fellows in our Spring 2021 Community Reporting Fellowship.
At the start of the COVID-19 shutdowns last March, New Orleans student Djuané Taylor spent a lot of time in bed. The structure of her life had collapsed. There was no school and nowhere to go beyond her mother’s home in New Orleans East and her father’s home downtown. Taylor remembers feeling weighed down and exhausted.
Taylor, then a junior at George Washington Carver High School in the Desire neighborhood, started waking up at 7 p.m. and falling asleep at 10 a.m. She wasn’t logging in regularly for virtual class and was distant from loved ones. When she was awake, she huddled beneath her comforter, blasting pop music through her father’s old Sony radio boombox and staring at a poster for the Japanese manga series “My Hero Academia” pinned to her wall. The days blurred.
“I’ve never felt that lonely before,” Taylor said.
Educators in Louisiana and nationwide are starting to get a clearer picture of the pandemic’s impact on test scores and other academic measures. But it could be years before we fully understand its mental and emotional toll on children and teens.
Early research shows cases of depression and anxiety were on the rise last year, as was substance abuse. A June 2020 survey by the Center for Disease Control found 18- to 24-year-old respondents were most likely to report having experienced a mental or behavioral health symptom like depression or anxiety. About a quarter of young adults said they started using or increased their use of substances in order to cope with the pandemic.
Taylor, 17, said she lived with depression before the pandemic. The isolation of the 2020–2021 school year was more intense than anything she’d experienced before.
Taylor, an artist working in paint, charcoal and pastel, found her way back through her artwork. Her classes were still online this spring, but she was able to return to daily in-person artmaking sessions last fall with Sketch Basin, a local youth art program.
Taylor picked up a paintbrush for the first time in months in November 2020. Her artwork became “sort of like therapy” this spring, she said. She started taking her easel and palette out to her backyard, painting for hours despite the humming New Orleans heat.
One of her works this spring was a painted self-portrait. Taylor painted her face in a range of vibrant colors. The piece was inspired by a moment Taylor shared with her brother. The two were in her room taking photos on their phones. In one photo, Taylor’s face was covered in rainbow-colored shadows from a colorful lamp she has in her room. She wanted to capture that moment, she said.
“During those moments when I was working on my art, I didn’t feel sad anymore,” Taylor said. “It sounds cliché, but I didn’t.”
Taylor said the pandemic forced her to tap into her inner strength. She couldn’t rely on others as much. She had to take the steps she needed to take to cope and make herself better, she said. In February, Taylor started sticking to a fixed sleep schedule and paying more attention to what she ate. She writes in her journal to allow an outlet for her emotions, especially when she doesn’t feel like talking about them.
Taking those steps was empowering, she added.
“If I can recover from my depression then I can do anything,” Taylor said. “I know that if I did it once, if I ever slip, then I know I can do it again.”
Taylor started her senior year at Carver in August. Her feelings about returning to school are mixed. She’s excited to reconnect with friends and teachers. She’s also nervous about how returning to high school life might impact her mentally. She made a lot of progress during the pandemic, and she doesn’t want to see that go away, she said.
“Me being able to grow came from me being by myself and being forced to learn myself in a way,” Taylor said.
She knows other students like her are still struggling as the pandemic poses new challenges. She encourages her peers to take time to “focus on yourself, how you are feeling and how you can get better,” she said.
“Find ways to cope that bring you joy,” Taylor said, “and find your way back.”
Mally Welch is a Spring 2021 Lede New Orleans Fellow. Welch, who grew up in Slidell, is a writer and a University of New Orleans alum.
