A sobering look into the mental health crisis (and some good news too)

Welcome back to Path to Recovery, a newsletter that will bring you weekly conversations on how the health care profession will recover from one of the most significant crises of our time. Click "subscribe" above or follow along using #PathtoRecovery.

#MentalHealth: There are many ways that the coronavirus pandemic is upending healthcare, but one change that’s worth keeping an eye on is the way in which mental healthcare is now front and center in the conversation. The mental health system in the U.S. has been broken for a long time: it’s hard to access care; it’s hard to find clinicians with available appointments; it’s hard to secure help for people in crisis.

All of these problems have existed for decades, despite laws that require payment parity for physical and mental health conditions.?

But the pandemic took a simmering crisis and notched it up to a full boil, increasing both the number of people struggling with behavioral health disorders as well as the severity of their conditions. And as demand has surged, the clinician shortage is clearer than ever.

The statistics are sobering, but there’s some good news to focus on too:?

• The stigma around mental health is waning, especially among younger people;
• Employers have increased the number of mental health benefits they offer; and
• New startups are finding ways to extend care to more individuals.

That last point in particular is already showing up in LinkedIn data this year. When we crunched the numbers for our annual U.S. Top Startups list, we found that a good percentage of the hottest young companies these days are focusing on the trauma that the pandemic has left in its wake. They’re all about wellness, particularly mental wellness.

We still need more trained therapists and psychiatrists to meet the immense demand. But there are some interesting things these startups are doing in the meantime. You can read more about them here .

Is your employer one of the companies expanding mental health benefits? Take this week’s poll and let us know what they’ve added.

#HardCases The mental health crisis has cut across many different professions, but there’s one group in particular that’s feeling particularly burnt out, and that’s frontline healthcare workers. In our Hard Cases piece this week, Dr. Graham McMahon , president and CEO of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, writes about the emotions physicians feel when faced with a devastating outcome — and why it’s so important to address burnout among clinicians. You can read the piece here .

If you’re a clinician, how effectively has your hospital addressed burnout this year? Let me know in the comments below.

(And if you’re interested in submitting a piece to the Hard Cases series, please send me an InMail.)

Conversations to join this week:

#HomeHealth: The demand for home health providers exploded during the pandemic after families became leery about sending loved ones to nursing homes and long-term care facilities (and who could blame them, given that these facilities saw a disproportionate number of covid deaths last year.)

Yet the field has struggled to attract workers, in part due to low pay. What’s the best way to get more people into the profession? Weigh in below.

#CareCoordination Many of the highest risk patients come to the hospital with multiple comorbidities — and it’s expected that clinicians can manage a host of issues simultaneously. But in behavioral health, patients often struggle to receive coordinated care when they have multiple conditions, like psychosis and substance abuse, for example. It’s another way our mental health system fails patients, as new research from the California Health Care Foundation points out.

#WomeninMedicine: And finally, last week I mentioned that September is #WomeninMedicine month. Check out this article from Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health, on six inspirational women changing the medical field.