The Coming Mental-Health Crisis

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, America’s infrastructure for mental-health and addiction services was fragmented, overburdened, and underfunded. The coronavirus has put far more stress on that broken system. So far, Congress has failed to shore it up. That oversight will prove harmful to patients and their families and costly to insurers and taxpayers. Mental-health disorders were already at the top of the list of the most costly conditions in American health care even before COVID-19.

The organizations that provide behavioral-health recently found, the pandemic is forcing practices to reduce services, provide care to patients without sufficient protective equipment, lay off and furlough employees, and risk closure within months. For people with serious mental illness who are trying to get treatment or access their medications, the doors of many community mental-health centers are closed. For those with both mental illness and COVID-19, including a large number who are homeless, no care is available, and they are at risk of exposing others.