A Mental Health Crisis Worsens

happened today. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, says we might see a turn around after this week in the fight against the coronavirus. Fauci says that now is not the time to ease up on social distancing to stop the spread of the virus. The Trump administration is discussing how to reopen the economy, but specifics haven't emerged. Global officials agree it's too soon to

lift widespread lockdowns. In a briefing today, Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's Regional director for Europe, said despite progress in some places, spikes and cases in Sweden and Turkey are concerning knowledge of COVID nineteen and some positive signs from some countries do not yet represent victory. They offer a rare chance for us to tighten old grip on the virus. Now it's not the time to relax measures.

It is the time to once again double and triple or collective efforts to drive towards suppression with the whole support of the society. Much needed ventilators are still in short supply in many US states, and the federal government is unevenly supplying them with what they need. Louisiana, for example, has received only five percent of the ventilators it requested from the national stockpile. Other states also report that they're

getting far less than what they need. Even as President Donald Trump boasted of great coordination between state and federal governments during a Tuesday night news conference, governors say they're still facing shortages and delays. Now for today's main story. This pandemic has dealt a blow to more than just our physical health. Job losses, The threat of sickness and indefinite lockdowns have taken a toll on the public's mental

health as well. When people go through a major disruption or loss, symptoms can emerge like anxiety, chess tightness, helplessness and disord orientation. Mental health professionals have a term for this, it's called adjustment disorder. But just as mental health care becomes more necessary, physical distancing and business closures have made

it harder to obtain. Finding a therapist or checking into rehab has become more challenging, And as more consumers look for mental health services, companies trying to meet that demand need to clear a host of regulatory hurdles. Cynthia Coons is a senior reporter at Bloomberg. She recently wrote about how a strained system was already failing to meet the needs of a lot of people who need treatment for

mental health. This crisis could make that much worse, but it could also open up new avenues to treatment that could end up making the system better. I talked to Cynthia recently. Before this pandemic even began, would you say America was already in a mental health crisis. I spent much of the last year writing about mental health in America because of issues that had sort of come to

light about. We have rising suicide rates in the US, we have increasing addiction problems, and so we spent a lot of time looking into the reasons behind this, and we looked into some of the failures of the pharmaceutical industry to innovating new drugs, although that is starting to change.

Some issues around ensures not necessarily reimbursing or covering much mental health care in network, and that's a chronic problem that prevents a lot of people from being able to afford care, and issues of literally not being a ton of supply and the mental health sort of world at large when you think about things like mental hospitals having closed in recent years. So there are a lot of reasons to believe that we're not in good shape from

a mental health perspective just to begin with. And that's even before something like COVID comes along and gives us all a new form of anxiety to deal with. So many Americans right now are under stay at home orders, and in particular, what challenges do they pose for someone who needs access to mental health care. So there's a

couple of different layers of this. So there's the basic person who might have therapy needs that they would normally go visit their therapist in person, and a lot of that is shifted to telehealth really quite quickly, and that's been remarkable. So there's a company's like talk Space. They've seen a six increase in demand since COVID quarantines took place. The government said that they're relaxing the HIPPA rules, or

they're basically relaxing enforcement around HIPPA rules. So now people can use FaceTime, which they might already have on their phone or Skype, in order to see their therapists. That's really a big change. And a lot of insurers have moved to make telehealth available or add tell health services or make them free. So those benefits have been great for people who might need regular talk therapy kind of maintenance.

But there's another level of people who are really vulnerable here getting into rehab, in patient rehab while they're open. They're all it takes is one COVID case to change the dynamics of whether a rehab is open or a psych ward in a hospital. And what about services that have to be in person that can't be done via telehealth or done remotely. What happens if an issue requires

say hospitalization. Yeah, that's a big problem here because there are rehabs open, there are mental health wards open, there are mental hospitals open. But I've talked to a number of providers in those settings who have said, were they to have one case of COVID, they're probably going to have to stop admitting new patients or they have to isolate people. And then there's the sheer fact that people in those settings can't do some of the group therapy,

which is quite effective for certain conditions. But hopefully as the medical system sort of writes itself and the case of COVID patients goes down, and mental health care can resume as it had been previously. But it was already a system that was slightly tenuously operating, and things like detox some of these mental health conditions were handled by the e R, and that's going to be a problem. Are we looking at perhaps maybe what you might call

a resource crunch in terms of mental health? You know, with even telehealth and these digital platforms, are there enough therapists or or mental health providers to go around to meet all these new demands for even digital therapies. Well, if we left the state licensing system as it was, probably the answer to your question would be we would be in a very serious um supply shortage. But a lot of states have moved to make it much quicker and easier for people to use their license in another state.

So where it used to be, if you're a provider in Nebraska, you could only see patients in Nebraska. That's what you're licensing dictated. Now, other states that are have high demand for therapy and for services are allowing therapists and doctors and providers to get rapid access to get their licensing approved in that state. So that's really meaningful. It's great that the states are moving to rapidly imp

meant changes so providers can work in other states. But it's still going to be a little bit of time before we're really up and running. From a very meaningful point of view, just because of the sheer nature of the fact that it's really complex system, it sounds like there is loosening, there's flexibility that we're seeing from the regulation, the licensing side of things. I mean, are you also

seeing this from the, say, insurance side of things. Are they taking specific actions to try and essentially just make things easier, make life easier in this circumstance. Yeah, number that was really encouraging. A number of insurers have said that they would actually not even require co pais at this time for behavioral health. Behavioral health is the umbrella for mental health and um substance abuse and addiction treatment,

and things like eating disorders or autism spectrum therapy. So a lot of insurers have actually said we're we're waving copais right now, or they're adding telehealth mental health services that they did not have before, and they're adding it with either no co pay or regular copay so pople can afford it. One of the biggest problems with mental health in America getting treatment was finding in network care.

So the infrastructure under mental health has been pretty shaky, and that's why so many people are seeking out of network care on a normal day now. Because the insurers recognized this surge in COVID, a lot of people are seeking help now that might not be traditionally. They're really rising to the occasion here and trying to make a lot of care virtual care free and accessible. So the question is really is this going to work? Are people? Really?

Is everyone who's seeking it or everyone who's seeking it going to be able to get what they need. But it's pretty remarkable step for an industry that has come under fire for not necessarily adequately reimbursing for mental health care for years now. It may be premature to try and make these forecasts past the point that we're no longer under stay at home orders or something like that.

But do you potentially think these changes were currently seeing will have a more long term lasting effect on America's mental health care system, say, after the endemic. That's a million dollar question. I think that's what a lot of advocates in the mental health community and world would love

to see. It's hard to say because so much is going to change after this pandemic, but I think, you know, one of the other benefits that I think we'll see from this, our employers are also rolling out services for employees and free services or services that are they may not have had before, and so hopefully they don't roll

back those services as soon as the coronavirus fades. So longer term, I don't I don't see a rollback to the way things were necessarily, but I think we just need to see how the health care system kind of is reshaped by what's happened here in the last couple of weeks and months and however long this goes on for. And and that was Cynthia Coons whose article on the deepening mental health crisis in America was published last week on Bloomberg dot com. And that's it for the Prognosis

Daily Edition. For more on the pandemic from our bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the podcast, please take a moment to rate us and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by Me topher Foreheaz, Jordan Gospore, and Magnus Hendrickson. Additional reporting by Cynthia Coons. Original music

by Leo Sitdrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening.