During the coronavirus pandemic, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and other serious anxieties may struggle to distinguish concerns brought on by their conditions from the fears shared by the general public. But some patients say successful treatment has armed them to handle COVID-19’s uncertainties.
In areas hit hard by the coronavirus, such as Detroit, behavioral health care workers have been overburdened and forced to scale back services at the same time people battling mental health disorders became more stressed and anxious.
Of those who went without seeing a doctor or other medical provider, 11% experienced a worsened medical condition, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In addition, nearly 40% said stress related to the coronavirus crisis has negatively impacted their mental health.
The pandemic has forced millions of families to weigh the risks of vulnerable grandparents getting too close to their beloved grandchildren — against the heartache of staying away.
At the start of the spring planting season, farmers across the U.S. heartland were already trying to recover from last year’s flooding amid worsening economic conditions when the pandemic struck. Farm bankruptcies and suicides continue to climb. A lack of mental health resources in rural America makes finding help more complicated.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked lawmakers to pare down their legislative wish lists and focus on the state’s coronavirus response. But state Sen. Jim Beall plans to forge ahead with his mental health care proposals, including a measure to create a state mental health parity requirement.
Under the national emergency, the government has waived a law that required patients to have an in-person visit with a physician before they could be prescribed drugs that help quell withdrawal symptoms, such as Suboxone. Now they can get those prescriptions via a phone call or videoconference with a doctor. That may give video addiction therapy a kick-start.
Martha Phillips traveled to Sierra Leone during the Ebola epidemic in 2014 to serve as a nurse. Now, she’s working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, advising her colleagues on how to stay safe.
Twins Edna Mayes and Ethel Sylvester, 92, are relying on each other through the pandemic, in which one of the hidden dangers is to their mental health.
State officials in California have achieved some success in promoting the use of medication-assisted treatment for people with opioid addictions, but they are bumping up against familiar resistance and constraints.
