In this video dialogue, Dr. Melissa Merrick and Paul Gionfriddo, President & CEO of Mental Health America, explore the overarching impact of COVID-19 on children, families, and mental health in America.
Dr. Merrick emphasizes the importance of focusing on prevention during these challenging times, which are accompanied by increases in depression and anxiety rates, and exacerbated by disproportionate inequities due to systemic racial barriers and historic adversity, and continuing to provide the safe, stable, and nurturing environments and relationships that enable children to succeed and thrive.
[To see the full conversation, please “rewind” to the beginning by dragging the red time elapsed button all the way to the left; this video inexplicably auto-advances to 06:53.] This video is excerpted from Mental Health America’s 2020 national conference COVID-19, Mental Health, and the Need for Equity, which took place online September 3 & 4.
