This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The End of the American Dream.

Locking down much of the country may have helped to “flatten the curve” a bit, but it has also had some very serious consequences that public health officials did not anticipate. Humans were created to be social creatures, and forcing us to isolate ourselves from one another for weeks on end has turned out to be quite problematic.

This has especially been true for those that live alone. Today, the U.S. has a higher percentage of one-person households than ever before, and keeping those individuals totally isolated in their own homes is not that different from putting prison inmates in solitary confinement for an extended period of time. In both cases, it can be just a matter of time before people mentally break.

Even before this pandemic came along, the suicide rate in the United…