COVID and Mental Health: What Now?
It’s time to address mental health on a national scale.
Dr. Patty Resick, a renowned specialist in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), used to tell me that justice is not found in the natural world.
Ask the gazelle about justice as it is being stalked by the lion.
Justice is like balance — the second you think you have it is the second it is gone. Although justice will never fully overcome the constraints of nature, we must always strive towards this goal.
What We Face
As a clinical psychologist, I can affirm that mental health in the COVID and post-COVID world has become an issue of great importance. Mental health is not one thing, but rather a constellation of symptoms, experiences, and biological factors that present in a diverse array of outcomes. It encompasses problems with mood, anxiety, substances, behaviors, and much more. It is also not the catch-all for everything that we do not immediately understand.
The United States had a problem with mental health prior to the pandemic, and it appears likely that we have a much more pronounced problem during, and inevitably after, COVID.
When I treated patients who felt ashamed of having PTSD, I would ask them to think of those they know, and then ask them to think are these people who appear down, worried, can’t sleep, and perhaps drink too much. Then I would ask them if these people also had others in their lives with these problems. Mental health problems can become insidious, and like water in the cracks of a sidewalk, their effects can be felt far and wide.
There is a general recognition that mental health is a problem. It always seems to be a problem when something bad happens, and always there is a pledge to act. In the post-COVID world, we will need to understand that mental health is a common and chronic problem outside of pandemics and episodes of terrible violence.
There are no simple solutions.
The answer cannot just be to hire more mental health providers. It takes years and intensive training to develop high-quality mental health providers. Moreover, by the time people come in to seek care, their problems are often complex, somewhat intractable, and intensive to treat.
What is Needed
The United States requires short, intermediate, and long-term plans for the mental health of the nation. We need to explore strategies to develop talent and maintain their work through fair compensation/remuneration.
There are advanced technological solutions to be developed, but we can’t just throw technology at a problem and think it will go away.
We need holistic, preventive models to divert those with mental health problems and criminal activity because incarceration comes at a great individual, societal, and financial cost.
In short, piecemeal approaches are unlikely to be successful. In much the same way that we are looking at how to address an aging and crumbling infrastructure, we must consider the health and wellbeing of our fellow citizens as key to the greatest resource America will ever have. That is the ingenuity, tenacity, decency, and spirit of our fellow Americans.
We must be bold. Now is the time to ensure the future of America with a population of healthy and happy people driven to launch this nation forward. Future entries will focus on the solutions that can get us where we need to go.
Atlas Research’s Health Disparities Working Group is releasing a new series identifying and providing solutions to the complex challenges that underserved Americans face. We look forward to engaging with our readers and driving the conversation on topics such as mental health, Veterans’ health, homelessness, maternal health, economic disparities, racial justice, and more. Opinions expressed are that of the author, and do not necessarily reflect Atlas’ position.
