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Three months into the coronavirus pandemic, the country is on the verge of another health crisis, with daily doses of death, isolation and fear generating widespread psychological trauma.

Federal agencies and experts warn that a historic wave of mental-health problems is approaching: depression, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.

A top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated many coronavirus patients died by suicide on Sunday, her father and the police said.

B. spoke to me by Zoom from the car parked outside their house—we couldn't talk when B. was at work, or inside the house, where B.'s children were playing. B. has also used the car to Zoom with colleagues about trying to devise safety protocols for their workplace, because those, too, are conversations B. can't have at work. B. is the medical director of an inpatient psychiatric unit in a small hospital within a large for-profit network. The hospital's administration, B.

In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced some hopeful news when it reported a slight uptick in U.S. life expectancy following years of decline largely due to historic rates of overdoses and suicides.

Sadly, COVID-19 has the potential to reverse serious progress made in addressing our nation's mental health and addiction crises — particularly around overdose rates — unless policymakers mitigate the pandemic's serious effects on behavioral health in the next stimulus package.

For many young people, sheltering at home means missing milestones and public recognition of their achievements. This is especially true for seniors graduating from high school and college.

Kendall Smith, a high school senior who lives in Tallahassee, Fla., says her school has many traditions leading up to graduation. But this year things are very different.

The new pressures on working parents to be full-time employees and full-time homeschool teachers while protecting their families from the pandemic are leading to exhaustion — with no end in sight.

Why it matters: Working parents make up roughly one-third of the U.S. workforce. The longer the stay-at-home orders continue, the higher the risk that these workers will be on the verge of emotional and cognitive burnout before they can return to their offices.

In the best of times, it can be hard to get mental health treatment. But these definitely aren't the best of times, and even for people who have established relationships with mental health professionals, the coronavirus pandemic is making it harder to find the right care.

The good news is that insurance companies are often reimbursing for telehealth behavioral health services now (even if they weren't before), and regulations on how mental health professionals can practice are relaxing.

Locked-down America has become a country desperately in need of virtual therapy, but the health care system has been left scrambling to use telemedicine to help connect people with mental health professionals.

Years of restrictive federal and state policies kept America's therapists from embracing telemedicine, and now behavioral health providers are rushing to move online — often with little guidance on best practices or assurances that the care will continue after the coronavirus fades.