Column: COVID mental health issues can hurt us in the long term

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Column: COVID mental health issues can hurt us in the long term

Stacy Endres-Dighe, Guest columnist

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Mental illness is common in America, yet as a country our approach to and treatment of these conditions has been abysmal. In 2019, one in five U.S. adults were living with a mental illness and one in ten youth suffered major bouts of depression.

Suicide was the 10th leading cause of death and accounted for approximately 41,000 American lives lost annually, more than twice as many as by homicide. Perhaps most alarming, however, is the fact that suicides often are related to a psychiatric disease with an unmet need for treatment. So why aren’t people seeking care and treatment? In one word: cost. 

Mental-health care and treatment are expensive. America’s unfortunate reality is that citizens most in need of mental-health care are often unable to pay for it, and this burden is disproportionately high among ethnic and racial minorities. 

And this discouraging picture of our country’s mental-health situation existed before a novel coronavirus took the world by storm. While the physical health impacts of COVID-19 have been catastrophic, the disease also is taking a hidden toll on our mental health, further stressing an already fractured [...]

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