In the Shadow of COVID-19, Mental Health Help Can’t Come Soon Enough

When the flu pandemic hit the United States in 1918, medical care was a privilege reserved for the elite. But the widespread outbreak of a deadly virus did not adhere to social hierarchies. It highlighted an inadequate system that too few could access.

As a result, forward-thinking people built a public health infrastructure from scratch — one which we still see the critical value of today.

More than a hundred years later, in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, we face the consequences of another inadequate and inaccessible system: mental health care. The psychological pressures that Covid-19 has brought — isolation and physical distancing, fast-rising unemployment and economic loss — have triggered what amounts to a secondary pandemic for millions of Americans. We need a mental health care overhaul.

Read the full article at CNN.com