- Melissa Rein Lively's name spread across the internet in early July after she posted a thread of Instagram videos where she destroys a Target mask display stand.
- The Arizona woman yelled obscenities as she ripped off
masks from the stand. - Lively claimed to be the spokesperson for QAnon. Police later apprehended her at home to take her to a
mental health facility. - She now says she regrets her actions, and her public outburst reflects a growing mental health problem during the pandemic.
In early July, Melissa Rein Lively posted a string of Instagram stories showing her destroying a mask display stand in a Scottsdale, Arizona Target.
The videos, which spread across the internet, show Lively yelling obscenities as she plucks off all the masks from a display stand and throws them on the floor.
"You let everybody else do it," Lively told two Target employees who approached her. "I can't do it because I'm a blonde white woman? Because I'm wearing a $40,000 Rolex, I don't have the right to f--- s--- up?"
In an Instagram Live later the same day, Lively told two police officers (which her husband had called out of concern for her mental
Lively's anti-mask meltdown led to her being hospitalized for a week, all of her public relations clients dropping her, and her husband filing for divorce according to USA Today.
Her breakdown is a public example of the mental health issues people are facing during the pandemic.
"I can absolutely see that how I acted was unbelievably inappropriate not to mention classless and just completely out of character for how I conduct myself, professionally and personally," she told USA Today.
Lively says her outburst was related to her worsening mental health in quarantine , and she is not alone
Lively told USA Today her outburst was caused by a manic episode triggered by the stress of the pandemic coupled with her bipolar disorder.
In a manic episode, someone with bipolar disorder can become more impulsive, reckless, and lose touch with reality.
"I think mental illness has been really something that has not been addressed as a result of this pandemic," she told USA Today. "Because what happened to me was scary and it changed my life forever. I felt I had absolutely no control over my actions."
Lively is not alone. A growing number of mental health professionals worry about what the long-term impacts of the pandemic will be on those with existing mental health conditions.
"I think the people who have a history of mental illness, it puts them at risk of a relapse," Dr. Karestan Koenen, an epidemiologist and professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, previously told Insider. "If someone has a history of depression, they're more at risk of having depression again."
A lack of access to mental health care facilities and structured routines combined with social isolation all contribute to the added stress placed on people with existing mental health conditions.
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