Shelter in place orders have confined as many as 300 million people to their homes since March. Staying indoors may make someone less likely to contract Covid-19, but for many people, home is not a safe place.
Counselors, therapists, and hotline workers involved in crisis support say many people are made vulnerable by the very orders meant to protect them. Call centers have closed their doors temporarily, requiring workers to field hours of emotionally intense calls from makeshift home offices. Their clients, many of whom must “shelter” with abusers, have had to become more discreet, reaching out in brief moments of freedom, sometimes in whispered tones.
“Where they usually have eight or nine hours a day of freedom and peace, they now have their partner there with them 24 hours a day,” says Richard Ham, a program services manager at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “So that little bit of space for self care is not existent anymore.”
Ham says calls to the hotline haven’t increased since the orders began.