WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021 THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
sleep troubles with anxiety.
It’s reasonable for people to
assume, she added, “there is a 50-
50 chance that the person they
are with might be feeling
stressed, anxious or depressed in
response to the current
situation.”
Government money is flowing
to help those in need.
As of November, Washington
has spent more than $8.5 billion
in coronavirus relief for
behavioral health, which
includes mental health issues
like anxiety and depression, in
addition to substance abuse.
Almost all of that was funneled
through five programs of the
Department of Health and
Human Services SubstanceAbuse and Mental Health
Services Administration. The rest
went to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
The GAO audits agency
spending, but it has no verdict
yet on how well Uncle Sam is
spending those billions.
“I’m afraid it’s a bit too early to
say,” Alyssa M. Hundrup, the
GAO health-care director, said by
email. “Much of the money has
just been recently awarded to
grantees, such as in March or
May of 2021, so we don’t yet have
a clear picture of how (or to what
extent) the money specifically
has been used. We do believe ...
that it will be important to
examine populations served by
programs receiving COVID-relief funds to determine
whether target populations were
reached, and whether there were
any gaps in intended populations
served.”
The pandemic is hitting a
mental health workforce that
also is individually stressed and
organizationally unable to fill the
gaps in service.
“We're seeing a large increase
in demand for anxiety and
depression treatment” by mental
health professionals who report
long wait times for clients
seeking care, Bufka said. “This
was a challenge pre-pandemic ...
The workforce was stretched
thin, wasn’t in the places where
always there was the greatest
need. But now we're seeing evenmore of that, more demand.”
Echoing those issues, GAO
said the coronavirus was
“expected to worsen” access to
treatment. On the long-standing,
insufficient availability of
treatment in low-income areas,
GAO added that “the pandemic
has exacerbated these concerns”
because of behavioral health
employee layoffs and “the loss of
providers without the financial
reserves to survive long-term.”
Senate Finance Committee
Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
said in an email that the GAO
report highlights the “urgent
need to repair America’s mental
health care system. That’s why
the Finance Committee has
launched a bipartisan effort toidentify and address the many
shortfalls facing Americans
struggling with their mental
health.”
GAO identified six broad
populations that are at a higher
risk of coronavirus-related
behavioral health issues:
l Native Americans, who were
hospitalized at a rate 3.5 times
greater than that of White
people; and African Americans
and Latinos, who were
hospitalized 2.8 times more
l Health-care workers who
fear catching the coronavirus,
worry about giving it to family
members and suffer from
exhaustion, burnout and the
emotional toll of watching people
die
l Children whose school
closures produced stress and
limited access to behavioral
health screening, while keeping
them at home with adults whose
coronavirus experiences could
lead to negative consequences in
the home, such as substance
abuse
l People with preexisting
behavioral health issues whose
conditions could worsen with
isolation, unemployment and an
inability to connect with
treatment
l Young adults whose craving
for socializing has been thwarted
by the pandemic
l People in financial distress
whose regular problems,
including difficulty affording
food, housing and
transportation, are exacerbated
by the fear of the coronavirus.
When I wrote about an earlier
GAO report on the coronavirus
and behavioral health, Wyden
sounded a warning that the
current report confirms:
“Underlying the global pandemic
is a five-alarm fire when it comes
to the state of Americans’ mental
health.”
But Bufka leaves us with a note
of hope.
“We know people are resilient.
People go through adversity and
they get through it,” she said. “It
is likely that a much smaller
proportion of us will have longer
term negative impacts as a result
of all this.”
[email protected]As if more than
800,000 deaths
and 50 million
coronavirus cases
in the United
States are not bad
enough, the virus
appears to be
spawning a
different health
calamity.
“The pandemic
is potentially driving another
national crisis related to its
effects on behavioral health, with
people experiencing new or
exacerbated behavioral health
symptoms or conditions.”
That’s the stark warning in the
first paragraph of a letter to
Congress in a new Government
Accountability Office (GAO)
report.
The expansive impact of the
pandemic is demonstrated by
this statistic: More than four out
of 10 adults, 43 percent, told a
Census Bureau pulse survey in
November 2020 that they
suffered from anxiety or
depression.
That survey did not include
questions about substance abuse.
Citing an August 2020 Centers
for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) study, the GAO
said 13 percent of adults
responding to a survey admitted
“having started or increased
substance use to cope with stress
or emotions related to COVID-
19.”
An ugly statistic not included
in the covid-19 death data is the
29 percent increase in drug
overdose deaths from April 2020
to April 2021, when more than
100,300 died, according to the
CDC’s National Center for Health
Statistics.
This data might not reflect the
true extent of the problem.
Therapists know “behavioral
health problems are often under
reported,” said Lynn Bufka, the
American Psychological
Association’s senior director of
practice transformation and
quality. Underreporting happens,
she said, because of stigma,
people accepting problems as
simply “the way it is” or not
connecting certain issues with
behavioral health, such as linking
Federal
Insider
JOE
DAVIDSON
GAO warns that p andemic could drive another national health crisis: Anxiety
ELAINE THOMPSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alex Honn waits for a car to pull forward at a drive-up coronavirus testing location i n Bellingham, Wash. The Government Accountability
Office says in a new report that the “pandemic is potentially driving another national crisis related to its effects on behavioral health.”urged President Biden to “reverse
the Trump administration’s cruel
and misguided decision,” saying
that a wholesale return of re-
leased inmates to prison “would
harm families, waste tax dollars
and undermine public safety.”BY DAVID NAKAMURA
The Justice Department ruled
Tuesday that the U.S. Bureau of
Prisons is not required to reim-
prison thousands of federal in-
mates who were granted home
confinement to limit the spread
of the coronavirus — even after
the federal health emergency
ends.
The decision reverses a Janu-
ary order issued in the final days
of the Trump administration and
allows the federal agency to avoid
recalling prisoners en masse.
The BOP has released more
than 36,000 to home confine-
ment since Congress expanded
the program at the start of the
pandemic to help reduce the
spread of the coronavirus in its
jails. Many of those prisoners
were near the end of their sen-
tences and would have been re-
leased even without the pandem-
ic, advocates say.
Nearly 8,000 are now on home
confinement, according to the
federal agency, with the rest ei-
ther having finished their sen-
tences or been sent back to prison
for violating rules of the program.
Advocates estimate that about
3,000 would be at risk of being
returned to prison if the Trump-
era order is not lifted.
Those who remain on home
confinement can continue to re-
integrate into society, living with
loved ones, holding down jobs
and abiding by specific restric-
tions that governed their release,
officials said.
In a 15-page memo, Christo-
pher H. Schroeder, an assistant
attorney general in the Office of
Legal Counsel, wrote that the
Federal Bureau of Prisons has
long exercised discretion about
home confinement on an individ-
ual basis and that the agency
must be allowed to avoid a “blan-
ket, one-size-fits-all policy.”
When the pandemic health
emergency is lifted, Schroeder
wrote, the agency should not be
required to “disrupt the commu-
nity connections these prisoners
have developed in aid of their
eventual reentry.”
Prison reform advocates have
petitioned the Biden administra-
tion for months to allow prison-
ers to remain on home confine-
ment after the emergency is lift-
ed. All of those released from jails
under the provision were deemed
“low risk,” federal officials said,
and many are elderly and in poor
health.
So far, 262 inmates and seven
staffers have died from the coro-
navirus at BOP-managed facili-
ties, along with 11 inmates who
were on home confinement, ac-
cording to the federal agency.
In a letter in April, 28 members
of Congress — 27 Democrats and
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) —A Justice Department spokes-
man said Attorney General Mer-
rick Garland ordered his staff to
examine the issue after he studied
the underlying statute. Garland
met Tuesday with several inmates
who had been released to home
confinement under the pandem-
ic-related Cares Act provisions to
hear about their experiences, the
spokesman said.
“Thousands of people on home
confinement have reconnected
with their families, have found
gainful employment, and have
followed the rules,” Garland said
in a statement. “In light of today’s
Office of Legal Counsel opinion, I
have directed that the Depart-
ment engage in a rulemaking
process to ensure that the Depart-
ment lives up to the letter and the
spirit of the Cares Act.”Kevin Ring, president of the
nonprofit prisoner advocacy or-
ganization Families Against Man-
datory Minimums, said he spoke
with inmates who were overcome
by emotion Tuesday after learn-
ing of the Justice Department’s
decision.
“This cloud has been over their
heads for 11 months,” since Biden
took office, said Ring, who also
spoke with Garland on Tuesday.
“We tried to sound the alarm
early and get the administration
to do this. It was frustrating at
times, but they got to the right
result.”
Emily Singer, press secretary of
Democracy Forward, called the
Justice ruling “excellent news for
thousands of people and families
to get before the holidays.”
[email protected]Federal inmates can stay in home confinement after covid emergency ends
JOSHUA ROBERTS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Attorney General Merrick Garland, seen Dec. 6, met Tuesday with
several inmates who had been released to home confinement.N0302 1xMore business?
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