The COVID-19 pandemic that has tightly gripped the world for more than two years is, at its root, a public health threat.
The highly infectious disease has taken the lives of more than 6 million people and sickened hundreds of millions more.
But the impact of the pandemic hasn’t stopped there. Its effects have spread to all parts of people’s lives.
It has hurt people financially, shutting down businesses and leaving millions temporarily unemployed. It has kept kids out of their classrooms, forced instead to adjust to learning virtually from their homes.
COVID has been disruptive. It has been frustrating. It has been fear-inducing.
And for many, the wide-reaching, all-encompassing havoc it has wrought has also brought with it attacks on their mental health.
The mental toll that COVID has had is often referred to as a second pandemic. And it’s something that’s not likely to disappear anytime soon.
A change in venue
When the pandemic hit, mental health service providers faced many of the same challenges that other businesses faced — most notable, shutdowns.
Suddenly a field that had relied on face-to-face interactions was no longer able to operate that way. A pivot was needed, a new way of doing things had to be found.
Like schools and doctors’ offices and many other businesses, the answer was to go virtual. Many mental health providers scrambled to find ways to provide telehealth services, something that was not very common before the pandemic.
“Telehealth, I absolutely did not do it before the pandemic, I did none,” said Dr. Nora Maidansky, a psychologist with The Human Aspect in Wyomissing.
Maidansky said she did do some executive coaching over the internet, but not therapy. Today, she is 100% telehealth.
And, she added, she’s thrilled with it.
“People have discovered that it works really well,” she said.
For many of her patients, Maidansky said, telehealth is a much more convenient way to take part in therapy. It saves them from having to travel and from trying to find enough time to fit therapy into their tight schedules.
“There’s no need to find a babysitter,” she said. “I have people who go from the Peloton (exercise machine) right to the screen. People fit it into the workday. I have people who connect from their cars during a lunch hour.
“It definitely saves a lot of time. That’s a big deal.”
Maidansky said telehealth has made things easier for her, too.
She said she previously had a knee injury that kept her from climbing the stairs to her second-floor office. That meant she couldn’t see patients.
“Now, if something hurts I can still see patients,” she said.
Maidansky said telehealth also allows patients to continue with their therapy when they travel or if they move out of the area.
“We couldn’t do that before,” she said.
Pamela Seaman, administrator of Berks County’s mental health and developmental disabilities system, said she has seen a big influx in the use of telehealth to treat mental health.
Before the pandemic the system used telehealth on a very limited basis, she said. But with the shifting and lifting of some state and federal regulations because of the pandemic, that changed.
“It’s a good thing because it was the only recourse that was available,” she said.
Seaman said her experience with telehealth has been a bit more mixed than that of Maidansky’s. Because she operates a public mental health system that serves anyone with Medicaid or no insurance, patients have a wide range of mental illness.
“It can be anything from anxiety to a serious mental illness like schizophrenia,” she said. “The more serious illnesses can be more debilitating.”
For many people on the more mild end of the spectrum, telehealth comes down to individual preference — some patients like it and some don’t. For some, it has torn down many of the barriers that may have been keeping them from getting the help they need.
That includes fear of the stigma mental health issues can have, Seaman said.
“Not having to actually walk through the doors, not having to do that makes them feel more comfortable,” she said “It’s a good place for people to get started.”
For those with serious mental illnesses, Seaman said, telehealth can present more of a challenge.
“Some of the seriously mentally ill are isolated already, so that’s a concern for us,” she said. “With telehealth there are fewer eyes on a person, fewer people talking to them and seeing how they’re doing.”
Seaman said there are also hurdles for accessing telehealth, particularly for low income patients or the elderly.
“You have to have the resources to do it — internet access, a computer, phone,” she said. “Not everyone has the same access.”
Despite those challenges, Seaman said telehealth is an important tool in treating mental health issues that will no doubt stick around long after the pandemic has subsided.
Are the kids all right?
One of the groups of people most impacted by the changes COVID forces — and likely the least well-equipped to deal them — have been kids.
Children have seen their worlds upended, in many cases spending long stretches of time out of their normal routines and away from their friends as school buildings were shut down. The disruptions have led to severe concerns about youth mental health and forced schools to bolster the services they offer.
Stephen Rodriguez, Pottstown School District superintendent, said his district was ahead of the game when it came to mental health services.
Before the pandemic, Pottstown was already an early adopter of things like trauma-informed practices, he said.
“We were doing it before all the cool kids knew about it,” he said. “It allowed us to quickly be responsive and realize what was going on with our students when the pandemic hit.”
Rodriguez said students have lost their sense of normalcy and have had the typical rituals of childhood ripped away. On top of that, many are experiencing grief and loss like they never have before.
And it has had negative consequences.
“There is no question we saw the effects of the pandemic,” he said. “You’d have to be asleep at the wheel to not see the mental health challenges our students are facing. If someone says it’s not happening, I’d say it’s right in front of our faces every day.”
Rodriguez said Pottstown is putting together a multilevel strategy to deal with the increasing need. It includes a number of new procedures and hiring several new staff members such as elementary school counselors, home visitors, social workers and other mental health workers.
It also includes checking in with staff members about their mental health.
“That’s not only on my radar, I’ve been talking to our directors about how we can more concretely help our teachers and staff,” he said. “I’m concerned. We’ve had conversations with employees where we tell them they’re burning themselves out and their health is in jeopardy.”
Dr. Rich Marchini, director of pupil services for the Owen J. Roberts School District, said his district has also ramped up resources for students.
Additional mental health interventions have been put in place at all grade levels, and several new mental health professionals have been added to the staff. That includes full-time mental health specialists at the high school, middle school and elementary school levels, as well as two full-time school psychologists.
Owen J. Roberts has been able to use some federal COVID relief money to help cover the costs, but Marchini said the district is looking for way to continue to pay for new staff when the federal dollars run out.
“You can’t expect that you just provide it for one year and then it goes away,” he said.
Marchini said kids’ mental health was already a growing issue before the pandemic, but COVID accelerated things. That is forcing schools to have a stronger focus on mental health, which he called a positive development.
“It has caused us to look a lot harder at it,” he said. “We want parents and students and families to reach out and let us know they need help.”
Out in the open
Of all the bad things COVID has brought to the world, Seaman thinks that one of the good things that came with it is an increased, open discussion about mental health.
“If there’s anything good to say about COVID, it’s that it’s putting this issue out front,” she said. “Just the sheer volume of people who are experiencing this.”
Seaman said the county service has been trying to increase its visibility during the pandemic to make sure people know where they can find help. And, she added, the number of people being impacted has taken a little bit of the stigma away from mental health issues.
“Hopefully, we can let people know the message that we preach all the time — it doesn’t matter your background or who you are, mental illness can impact anyone,” she said. “Hopefully, people will accept that going forward.”
Of course, if more people do seek help, they’ll need to have resources available.
Seaman said that like just about everywhere else, the mental health field has seen employment shortages since the start of the pandemic.
“A lot of people decided to retire or change careers,” she said. “We are hopeful it will rebound.”
Seaman said continued funding at the state and federal level of mental health services will go a long way toward making sure there are enough professionals available to help those in need.
Source: Berkshire mont
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