By Catherine Teare and Katherine Haynes, California Health Care Foundation, July 16, 2020
As the new coronavirus began spreading across the country, what was an infectious disease crisis also became a behavioral health emergency. Compared to a year ago, the rate of people reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression has tripled from April through June, according to the weekly Household Pulse Survey, a new product from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Census Bureau.
The pandemic’s impact on the mental health of people of color is especially pronounced. Roughly 4 in 10 Black, Latino, or mixed-race people report symptoms of anxiety or depression at above-average rates. Deep societal injustices and related inequities in access to health care underlie the course of the pandemic and the resulting behavioral health crises. We believe rates of anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicide may not have peaked yet.
That is why CHCF’s work to improve behavioral health care is so timely. We are focused on integrating and improving services that provide care for mental health, substance use, and physical health, especially for people insured through the state’s Medi-Cal program. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we were concentrating our state policy efforts on reforms proposed in the state’s CalAIM initiative. Those changes have been delayed for at least a year by the pandemic and resulting recession, and we now see new opportunities set in motion by the crisis to advance better models for mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) services.
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