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Doctors are warning of a post-COVID mental health crisis that is already underway | Social Views

Patriot-News - 5/5/2021

Kids will soon be getting vaccinated, closing another door on COVID-19 s ability to kill; and making it easier to envision a more normal school year in September.

But as many are ready to celebrate this major development, educators, doctors and faith leaders are gearing up the crisis they fear will come after COVID-19 - a pandemic PTSD.

Mental health professionals say we are facing a looming mental health crisis akin to any wartime PTSD. And they are warning we should start preparing now.

Organizations such as the Pennsylvania Council of Churches are echoing that warning. At a recent webinar on the COVID-19 crisis, representatives of the Latino, African American and Asian American communities urged faith leaders to hear the warning and galvanize their communities to meet the challenge.

Dr. Melissa M. Brown, a licensed psychologist and clinical manager with UPMC, said youth are already starting to show signs of emotional distress as the pandemic has stretched into more than a year. But she and others fear the worst is yet to come.

Dr. Brown was among the physicians and educators on the recent "Kids and COVID: Impact K-12" webinar organized by PennLive and the World Affairs Council that aired on Facebook. Pennsylvania's Acting Physician General Dr. Denise Johnson, Dr. Nirmal Joshi, Chief Medical Officer, Population Health, Mount Nittany Health System; Kristie Kaufman, pediatrician with Mt. Nittany Health; as well as Rich Askey, president of the Pennsylvania State Educators Association and William Harner, superintendent of Quakertown School District, joined the discussion.

They all were clearly concerned about what Brown described as a looming mental health crisis in Pennsylvania and around the nation.

Dr. Brown's message was alarming. Psychologists and counselors are seeing many parents struggling with emotional turmoil as COVID-19 has threatened incomes, severed social contacts and disrupted routines. Millions of parents throughout the nation are trying to cope with grief, anxiety and depression, and that means many of their kids are, too.

Let's not forget millions of people have died, families have been unable to grieve together and comfort each other. Many couldn't even attend funeral services for aged parents or beloved friends. All of this takes a toll, an emotional toll that Brown says can't be ignored.

Reader Camille Bigles Fulton put it this way: "It's about the mental health crisis due to isolation, intensified by COVID."

"We need more options for these kids of all ages to help with depression and anxiety issues," Jenine Reed added.

That message resonated with Askey and Harner. When kids return to classrooms in the fall, many students will be dealing with the post pandemic trauma that psychologists say is headed our way. Schools will need more resources to deal with it, the educators warned. And we should start preparing now.

The emotional toll of COVID-19 is undeniable. Physicians like Joshi have been on the frontlines these past months trying to keep people alive as health care workers were overwhelmed with the onslaught of COVID-19 patients. They've battled stress, anxiety and depression as the number of dead mounted and as politics interfered with their best efforts to keep people safe.

But mental health professionals like Dr. Brown also have been on the frontlines of the emotional trauma the pandemic has wrought. And they're gearing up for even worse times.

We don't know how this mental health crisis will manifest, and we don't even want to try to imagine what it means. But we urge officials to take Dr. Brown's warnings seriously and start planning for the mental health crisis that she says is already underway.

State officials must allocate resources to help schools hire more counselors, and they must pull in mental health professionals to develop strategies to address the looming threat.

We were unprepared for COVID-19. We should prepare now to deal with its aftermath.

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