From the Editor
Will suicide rates rise with COVID? How will mental health care delivery change? Are we overlooking the most vulnerable?
This week’s Reading will focus on the latest in the literature on the COVID and mental health care, with three selections.
In the first, we consider a paper on COVID and suicide. In a JAMA Psychiatry paper, Mark A. Reger (of University of Washington) and his co-authors consider the impact of the global emergency on suicide. They are practical, and explain that there are clear opportunities for suicide prevention. In responding to COVID, they call for a “comprehensive approach that considers multiple US public health priorities, including suicide prevention.”
What is the role of digital mental health during and after this pandemic? In the second selection, we consider a new JMIR Mental Health paper. Dr. John Torous (of Harvard University) and his co-authors note the greater use of telemental health, apps, and other forms of e-mental health care. They write: “The COVID-19 crisis and global pandemic may be the defining moment for digital mental health, but what that definition will be remains unknown.”
Finally, in the third selection, we look at an essay by Andrew Solomon. The Pulitzer Prize-finalist author discusses pandemic and mental health, worrying that those in need may be overlooked. “When everyone else is experiencing depression and anxiety, real, clinical mental illness can get erased.”
DG
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