Prior to COVID-19 the U.S. was in the midst of a mental illness crisis. Then with COVID-19, situation worsened even more. According to the poll conducted by American Psychiatric Association, one third of Americans said the coronavirus had a serious impact on their mental health.

The American Psychiatric Association had listed steps that Congress ought to take right away:

• Healthcare workers should be provided with appropriate and sufficient personal protective equipment and mental health support.

• Expand telepsychiatry and make insurers to pay clinicians to provide it just like any other medical service.

• Treat behavioral health needs of patients the same as their physical health needs. Release emergency funding to make sure that the community health centers, crisis centers and essential local clinicians can cater to the growing mental health care needs.

This will help to get over the initial shock. But, for Americans to thrive in the long-run, Congress needs to make sizable investment in the existing mental health infrastructure.

• Americans with mental illness access care through their primary care physicians. They have no direct access to psychiatrists, creating a barrier to get specialized treatment for complex mental health conditions.

• The American Psychiatric Association backs collaborative care model. Here the primary care physicians work with a psychiatrist and a behavioral health care manager to help patients get optimized treatment with mental illness in the primary care setting.

• COVID-19 has brought forth the severe doctor shortage across the United States, including the shortage of psychiatrists. It is critical to respond to the crisis so every kind of health professional is necessary. But psychiatrists bring unique expertise to serve the most severely compromised patients in psychiatric units and hospitals, homeless shelters, long-term care facilities, jails and prisons.

• Thus, by forgiving some of the debt that students amass during medical school could incentivize more people to serve in these capacities, and so would lifting caps on federal funding for new residency slots.

• More psychiatric beds were needed prior to COVID-19, and now even more are needed as physical distancing continues. Hospitals have decreased psychiatric beds by converting them to beds for COVID-19 patients.

• Patients in psychiatric units contracting COVID-19 have to be separated from other patients. At present we don’t have enough beds to treat everyone for the length of time they need. In the absence of federal funding for psychiatric beds, there will be higher deaths from the mental health sequelae of COVID-19.

The federal government has to dramatically change the way it deals with mental illness. Without such action, more Americans will suffer from depression and despair.