Montana Free Press, Outside the boxes Health care professionals anticipate a pandemic-induced mental health crisis.

On May 30, D.C.-based news outlet The Hill reported on how ill-prepared the U.S. is to meet an impending pandemic-induced mental health crisis, noting that the national Well Being Trust had recently predicted as many as 75,000 “deaths of despair” if pre-pandemic gaps in mental health and substance abuse services are not improved. The Washington Post similarly noted that the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s emergency hotline in April registered a 1,000% increase in activity over April 2019. This attention to the long-term public health effects of the coronavirus supports what a poll conducted in March by Montana State University already indicated: people are stressed, they’re anxious and they’re worried for themselves and others.
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