truthout--2020-05-14--Coronavirus Pandemic Prompts Global Mental Health Crisis

Is the coronavirus pandemic generating a mental illness crisis ?
Millions face isolation , poverty and anxiety .
We speak with psychology professor and author Andrew Solomon , as the United Nations calls on governments to put mental health “ front and center ” in their response to the crisis .
This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman in New York City , the epicenter of the pandemic , along with my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joining us from her home to prevent community spread , also here in New York City .
Hi , Nermeen .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Good morning , Amy .
And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , today the United Nations warned that the coronavirus pandemic is generating a mental illness crisis , as millions face isolation , poverty and anxiety .
Domestic violence is rising .
Health workers are reporting an increased need for psychological support .
The director of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health department , Dévora Kestel , pushed for governments to put the issue front and center in their response to the crisis .
AMY GOODMAN : Here in the United States , tens of millions of Americans say the coronavirus is harming their mental health , with more than a quarter of Americans polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation reporting a , quote , “ major impact.
” A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 % increase in April compared with the same time last year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up .
Well , for more on the psychological effects of the pandemic and the isolation and economic crisis resulting from the global lockdown , we ’ re joined by Andrew Solomon , professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University , an award-winning author of several books on mental illness , including his widely acclaimed memoir , The Noonday Demon : An Atlas of Depression .
His best-selling book , Far from the Tree : Parents , Children , and the Search for Identity , was awarded the National Book Critics Circle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent piece in The New York Times headlined “ When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone , Anxious and Depressed ” and a story for The Guardian , “ For those of us with depression , coronavirus is a double crisis.
” Andrew Solomon , welcome to Democracy Now !
It ’ s great to have you with us .
If you could start off by talking about this double crisis that people are experiencing , not only in the United States , but around the world ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And listening to the headlines as you read them earlier , it would be difficult not to be in crisis of one kind or another .
When I talk about a double crisis , I ’ m talking about these two problems , one of which is that we are all afraid of the virus itself .
It feels like the angel of death is waiting outside our front door .
It feels like people we know are dying .
We ’ re going into , many of us , some form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a great deal that ’ s going wrong that ’ s specifically about the virus .
And then the other piece of the crisis is that the response to the virus is primarily to shelter at home and to shelter with a very limited group of people or alone , and the isolation is taking a terrible toll .
Human beings are social animals .
And being reduced , in effect , to either a very small circle of people , which can be stressful , or to total loneliness has additional adverse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andrew Solomon , could you also talk about — you ’ ve mentioned the fact that as this mental health crisis unfolds in the U.S. , there are certain people who are less likely to access care : poor communities across the U.S. Could you explain why that is ?
And this is happening as many local community mental health centers are facing many financial pressures , as a result of which they ’ re cutting programs to help people in their communities .
ANDREW SOLOMON : Absolutely .
In general , people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to have their mental health problems diagnosed or treated , less likely to have them diagnosed because the basis for diagnosing depression is often that you feel really terrible despite having quite a pleasant life .
And if you have a very actively unpleasant life and you feel terrible all the time , you ’ re unlikely to recognize that the way you feel may be the result of or a symptom of mental illness , and instead you ’ ll think it ’ s merely commensurate with your circumstances .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get a diagnosis , the lack of access to mental healthcare remains shocking in the United States .
There was a Mental Health Parity Act that went through some years ago .
It ’ s full of loopholes .
It ’ s a sort of Swiss cheese of an act .
And people who don ’ t have decent health insurance and who don ’ t have access to so-called higher-quality doctors and teaching hospitals and so on are likely , in most instances , to go untreated .
They can call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can sort of patch together little bits of response .
But they aren ’ t going to get the kind of steady , focused treatment that might allow them to come away from their mental illness and to emerge better able to contend with the very real challenges they face in the world .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And , Andrew , could you talk about , in this context , the effect of the economic crisis on mental health ?
During the 2008 financial crisis , a study found that for every percentage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there was about a 1.6 % increase in the suicide rate .
And now we ’ re looking at tens of millions , almost 30 million people , unemployed in the U.S. — a place , incidentally , which has very high rates of suicide already .
I mean , rates around the world have generally been coming down , but in the U.S. they ’ ve steadily been increasing since 1999 .
ANDREW SOLOMON : Yes .
The rate of suicide is shocking , and it remains shockingly high in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis , you know , it ’ s difficult to be dealing with the two primary components that affect everyone , which are fear of getting sick or of losing people you love , and the problem of negotiating isolation .
But when you add to those two already-existing difficulties financial collapse and ruin , you ’ re in a really desperate place .
And there are obviously huge numbers of people who have no idea whether they ’ re going to be able to feed themselves over a longer-term period of time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been lost are not all going to return the minute that the economy reopens .
And the economy reopening is going to be a very bumpy and problematic process .
You talked about it a bit in the headlines today .
So , you have a huge number of people who are facing not only the kind of fantastical concerns of the virus itself and not only loss , but who are also looking at being deprived and possibly having lives in which they ’ ll never be able to afford anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we don ’ t have a safety net in the United States .
And that ’ s part of why the financial crisis generated so much trouble and such high rates of depression and even of suicide .
And I should say , in relation to suicide , that there is a tendency to think that physical health is the urgent problem right now and that mental health is a sort of luxury .
But actually , there are many people who , because they have poor mental health , will be driven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may continue to escalate , or to acts of suicide .
I ’ ve already heard about people , who already had some degree of mental illness , who have found the isolation so difficult and the fear so overwhelming , that they have in fact ended up killing themselves .
And so , that increasing rate of suicide reflects a very stark reality .
And for people who are looking also at financial ruin , the temptations of suicide are terribly proximate .
AMY GOODMAN : Andrew , you write , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anxiety , real , clinical mental illness can get erased.
” If you can explain what you mean ?
And following up on your point about suicide , so let ’ s talk about what can be done right now .
What are you advising ?
What are you counseling ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , I would say that there are essentially four responses to the current situation .
Some people are very emotionally robust and seem to be able to handle it relatively gracefully .
Some people are having a bit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of as psychiatric first aid .
They need to regulate their eating .
They need to regulate their sleep .
They need not to become complete news junkies 24 hours a day .
They need , in a variety of other ways , to moderate their behavior .
Then there are people who have never experienced mental illness before , who are being pushed up into mental illness at this moment by the experiences they have .
And there , we have to look at the very tricky thing , which is : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distress from a clinical condition ?
And the line can be very blurry , and it varies from person to person .
And finally , we have the people who already had mental illness , who are now developing what I ’ ve called and many clinicians call a double depression , in which underlying depression and anxiety are suddenly now escalated to the complete crisis point , to the point where people are contemplating suicide , to the point where people are unable to function , to the point where people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fill out the paperwork to get benefits that they may require .
Those are people who have got really serious and problematical mental illness .
In terms of advice , you know , the best advice is that depression is , on the one hand , a terrible and overwhelming problem , and , on the other hand , quite a treatable problem .
So if you ’ re able to access mental healthcare , you should do it .
And you should understand that it isn ’ t a failure , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve collapsed unduly , and it doesn ’ t mean you can ’ t deal with stresses other people can deal with .
If you ’ re suffering and you ’ re in anguish and you ’ re in pain , there are treatments available , and you should take advantage of them .
But that goes back to our earlier point , which is that there are people who are in a good position to take advantage of the mental illness challenges by going to a good teaching hospital , by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medication and engaging in psychotherapy .
And there are a lot of people for whom those things feel unavailable , and the prospect of trying to access them , even for people who theoretically should have some level of care , is completely overwhelming .
So we need very much to try to support those populations .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And , Andrew Solomon , one of the reasons that people don ’ t access mental healthcare , even when they need it , is that there ’ s still an enormous stigma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you mentioned earlier that mental healthcare is viewed as a luxury , and physical health is privileged over mental health , despite the obviously often lethal effect of mental illness .
So , could you talk about that , the stigma attached to mental illness ?
And also , in fact , some healthcare clinicians have said that this pandemic , because it ’ s producing such widespread mental suffering , may actually reduce the stigma attached to mental illness .
Your response ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , if we reduce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that will be the elusive silver lining in the hideous cloud we find ourselves in right now .
And I ’ m very hopeful that that may happen .
I mean , the statistics that you read out at the beginning , that some 40 % of Americans are now reporting mental health complaints , I think , is indicative .
If 40 % of Americans are experiencing this , it ’ s difficult for it to remain stigmatized in the way that it did when it was a lower percentage .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people believe .
And I ’ ve sometimes called depression the family secret that everybody has .
I have found , over the years since I ’ ve started working on depression , people will say to me , “ Oh , don ’ t you find that people sort of are laughing at you behind your back ?
Don ’ t you worry about the self-exposure that was involved in writing about your own experience with depression ?
” And my nearly universal experience is that everyone I meet says , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my wife .
She ’ s having a really difficult time , ” or “ My brother did such and such , ” or “ I myself have been in treatment , but I ’ m not sure I ’ m getting the right treatment , ” that this is really all over the place and that it touches everyone .
Now it touches more than everyone .
And in many countries , there have been real moves to respond to that .
Even in China , which we don ’ t think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when the virus surfaced in Wuhan , the government moved enormous numbers of mental health professionals to Wuhan to try to help people get through that trial and that trauma .
In the United States , we kept focusing on school closures and on all of these other things that are terribly important , but without giving any federal attention whatsoever to the mental health crisis .
And so , I think that reinforces the stigma .
I think if we had a president who was able to stand up and say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one way or another , directly or indirectly .
It ’ s an absolute crisis .
It requires attention and response , ” that the stigma would evaporate relatively rapidly because of the sheer population numbers .
As long as the government continues to ignore this problem , even though some state governments are responding to it , I think that the stigma remains and that people have a sense of failure .
But I often say to people , “ In the first place , you should get treatment , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condition might escalate , and you might end up killing yourselves .
But in the second place , you should get treatment because right now you ’ re 37 years old , and you ’ re never going to be 37 years old again .
And if you use up the next year feeling terribly depressed , you ’ re going to have years and years ahead of you of having to negotiate the aftermath of that depressive episode and having a possibly recurrent depression , and you ’ re going to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and when you really needed your resources to deal with isolation and to deal with losing people you love and to deal with financial crisis .
And we can ’ t afford not to be at our strongest and best as we deal with those very real and immediate problems.
” AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re talking to Andrew Solomon , professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University , award-winning author of the books Far from the Tree : Parents , Children , and the Search for Identity .
In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talk with him about children dealing with this pandemic , and also his book The Noonday Demon : An Atlas of Depression .
I wanted to ask you about the doctor who took her own life , a top ER doctor , in April , who treated coronavirus patients in New York , died by suicide .
Dr. Lorna Breen was the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital but had been staying with her family in Virginia at the time of her death .
She herself had contracted the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to recover from the illness .
Her family blames her job for her death .
Her dad , in an interview — she had described harrowing scenes from the hospital — said , “ Make sure she ’ s praised as a hero , because she was , ” said her father , Dr. Philip Breen .
He added , “ She ’ s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.
” Andrew Solomon , can you comment on her death and the pressure that healthcare professionals are facing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , saying , “ We ’ re used to dealing with sick people and seeing terrible things , ” talking about doctors and nurses , “ but what ’ s devastating with COVID is the sheer volume .
It ’ s like drinking from a poisonous fire hydrant.
” ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , I think that the first thing to say is that she was a hero and that we should all be breathless with admiration for somebody who was willing to work so hard in this area , in which , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few thanks , and who was willing to put herself on the line until she got to the point of that despair .
But , obviously , the despair itself is catastrophic and terrifying .
I mean , mental health professionals are under pressure .
Physical health professionals are actually seeing people die .
People become doctors , by and large , because they want to help people and make them better .
And here come these vast numbers of people for whom we can do virtually nothing .
And instead of being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better , there ’ s a sort of vague effort to do some kind of palliative care as you watch them die in front of you and then pack them into big refrigerated trucks .
The stress of it is enormous .
I would emphasize that there ’ s also a lot of stress for people like grocery store workers .
There ’ s a lot of stress for people who are in any of the areas in which there ’ s a lot of exposure .
And the stress is partly vulnerability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would add another layer , which we haven ’ t talked about so far , which is that we don ’ t really understand very well the full functioning of the coronavirus .
There are people who have been dying of strokes that appear to be related to coronavirus .
I would suggest that it ’ s possible that it also can have an effect , at least in some people , on mental health by having a direct organic effect on the brain .
It ’ s very nice that everyone opens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in appreciation of healthcare workers in New York and in many other cities scattered around the country .
It ’ s important that those people be acknowledged .
But acknowledging them doesn ’ t take away from the desperation that you feel having something that ’ s so widespread and so untreatable .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Andrew , many people have said that — warned that just like hospitals were completely overwhelmed at the start of this pandemic , the mental health industry will also be overwhelmed by the imminent mental health crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ levels of care different communities in the U.S. can access , and what some of the difficulties are with accessing mental healthcare even for those who want to seek it who have insurance , who are in places where mental healthcare is readily acceptable , but still they ’ re not able to afford it or get to it ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , there are so many layers to the problem of mental healthcare in the United States that existed before we got to this pandemic .
And now , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even worse .
We don ’ t have enough people in the field of mental healthcare .
The people who are in the field of mental healthcare often deal with insurance that essentially requires that they see five or six patients an hour .
You can ’ t understand what somebody ’ s mental health problems are in 10 minutes , much less figure out an appropriate means of treatment .
There are a lot of people who come in saying that they have a mental health complaint , they ’ re given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any further conversation .
If the reason that your mental health has escalated to this point is because of anxiety about being locked in and is because of loneliness and is because of fear of the illness and is for all of those other reasons , you need to be able to interact and exchange points of view about them and have someone who can sort out for you what constitutes a neurotic response and what constitutes serious mental illness and what constitutes a reasonable response to exactly what ’ s going on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we don ’ t have enough people in the field .
It ’ s partly that it ’ s difficult to access the people in the field , even if you ’ re in a position in which your insurance covers it .
It ’ s also that you have to be able to self-diagnose and be willing , despite the stigma that we talked about a moment ago , to go in and say , “ I have a serious mental health problem , and I want to figure out how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that assertion is already very difficult .
And , of course , there are all of the people who , even if they could make that assertion , because of insurance problems and unemployment and so on , aren ’ t able to access mental healthcare at all .
AMY GOODMAN : Andrew Solomon , you ’ ve warned that “ People with pre-existing pulmonary illnesses drop dead of this thing .
People with previously existing mood disorders will die of it , too , if mostly in a slower and less obvious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and also your own experience , which you so painfully , honestly , authentically deal with in so much of your writing , your own experiences with depression ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : Well , people dropping dead of it are all of the people who are dying because they end up committing suicide , like the brave doctor we just spoke about ; the people who are dying because when you ’ re depressed , your immune system is depressed , as well , and people become more physically vulnerable to the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when you have severe depression , your ability to take care of yourself dwindles , and people end up being careless and going out without a mask and standing too close to other people and so on and so forth ; the people who develop touch deprivation , in which the absence of physical contact with other human beings pushes them over the edge and leads them into damaging behavior .
So there are many , many ways in which this mental health problem becomes a serious one that can lead to destroyed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people dying of the virus who don ’ t even have it .
My own experience , historically , is that in 1994 , a few years after my mother died , I developed a very acute and serious depression .
I didn ’ t recognize it for what it was at the time .
I was determined , because of the stigma , I suppose , that I would deal with this on my own .
And I eventually reached the point at which I was almost unable to do anything , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even to pick up the phone and ask for help .
And then I finally realized something had to be done .
And so I went , and I sought treatment .
And then , like so many other people , I sought treatment , and I thought , “ OK , I ’ m fine now , ” and I went off the treatment , and I plummeted again .
And I went back on treatment .
Depression is a cyclical illness , and once you ’ ve acquired it , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and over again .
And what I would always say is that the opposite of depression is not happiness , but vitality .
And it was vitality that I lost in those moments .
It wasn ’ t that I felt sad all the time , though I did feel sad for a variety of reasons .
It was that I no longer had the basic energy to go about the business of my life .
I didn ’ t feel like I could get up , like I could cope with things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like I could talk to people .
I found myself withdrawing more and more and more into the painful solitude of my own disturbed mind .
And that tends to be what happens in depression .
And in this crisis , I think a lot of people start off having rational , reasonable fear and distress about what ’ s going on , and then it gets to the point where they are paralyzed .
And they aren ’ t making themselves meals .
And they either do nothing but sleep , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They do nothing but eat , or they can ’ t eat at all .
They can ’ t bear the idea of exercise .
They stop the even limited means of communication we have , by phone or by Zoom or by whatever people are using , and withdraw socially from their surroundings .
Those would be some of the signs through which one could recognize the beginning of a depression .
If you feel you ’ re not functioning well because of the way you feel , it may very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feel upset , it may very well be a rational response to this tragic time .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Well , Andrew , before we conclude , I ’ d like to ask about the impact of this pandemic on children .
Initially , it seemed that there was possibly one saving grace , which was that children didn ’ t appear to be vulnerable .
But that , of course , has changed with the recent deaths of three young children right here in New York .
So , could you talk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what are the broader effects of the pandemic and the resulting lockdown , isolation , etc.
, on children of different ages ?
ANDREW SOLOMON : The effect on children is enormous .
My husband and I have a son who ’ s 11 , who ’ s here with us in our quarantine that we ’ re living in .
And I ’ m very much struck by the fact that the continuity of my friendships or of my husband ’ s lies , to a large extent , in verbal communication @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re able to see and talk to our friends on Zoom and elsewhere , we can more or less feel that we ’ re keeping in touch .
The fabric of children ’ s friendships is in doing things together .
And so , children who are deprived of the ability to do things together don ’ t have that much to say to one another when they call one another , and so their friendships themselves lose some of their fabric and substance .
And the children are therefore missing not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but also the social situation of school .
And I think if we do this for a year , and my son , who was 10 when we started , ends up being nearly 12 by the time that we ’ re finished , what are the modes of development that he will have missed ?
Now , in addition to that , children are not stupid , and they can understand that this situation is unnatural and bizarre .
Some children are able to put a good face on it ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s an enormous stress on them to recognize this .
And the biggest stress on the children often is the condition of their parents .
There was an experiment done , a study done , some years ago , in which a researcher named Myrna Weissman tried to determine what the best way was to treat childhood depression .
And after trying 15 different things in a very large controlled study , the thing that was most effective in helping children was to treat their mothers .
And so , the mental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental illness of children .
Even just the stress and distress of parents bleeds over into the condition of children .
And now with this news that the disease may in fact be fatal for children or may make them very , very sick , contrary to what we previously heard , we have to isolate our children more , and we have to take more precautions .
And we ’ re less likely to get back to school and less likely to go back to anything like what our children had come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s a very toxic situation psychologically , as well as an anxiety-producing one physically .
AMY GOODMAN : Andrew Solomon , we thank you so much for spending this time with us , author , professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University .
We ’ re going to link to your pieces , in The New York Times , headlined “ When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone , Anxious and Depressed ” ; in The Guardian , “ For those of us with depression , coronavirus is a double crisis.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 .
That ’ s 1-800-273-8255 .
This is Democracy Now !
This breaking news : The unemployment figures are out .
Nearly 3 million U.S. workers applied for unemployment last week , with more than 36 million total applications in two months .
And that ’ s an underestimate of the numbers of those who are unemployed .
When we come back , we look at the tremendous emotional toll the coronavirus is taking on families when loved ones are forced to battle COVID alone in hospitals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

Is the coronavirus pandemic generating a mental illness crisis? Millions face isolation, poverty and anxiety. We speak with psychology professor and author Andrew Solomon, as the United Nations calls on governments to put mental health “front and center” in their response to the crisis.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, along with my co-host Nermeen Shaikh, who’s joining us from her home to prevent community spread, also here in New York City. Hi, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Good morning, Amy. And welcome to our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today the United Nations warned that the coronavirus pandemic is generating a mental illness crisis, as millions face isolation, poverty and anxiety. Domestic violence is rising. Health workers are reporting an increased need for psychological support.
The director of the World Health Organization’s mental health department, Dévora Kestel, pushed for governments to put the issue front and center in their response to the crisis.
DÉVORA KESTEL: We have seen in the past that similar cases of economic crisis have increased the number of people with mental health issues, leading to high rates of suicide, for example, due to the mental health condition or the substance abuse, for example. … We have, for example, some surveys that were done nationally in a few countries showing an increase of prevalence of distress of 35% of the population surveyed in China, 60% in Iran, 45% in the U.S. … There are some surveys that were done in Canada, where 47% of healthcare workers reported need for psychological support — 47%, it’s almost half of them. In China, we have different figures: for depression, 50%; anxiety, 45%; insomnia, 34%. Pakistan also, 42% to 36 — sorry, 36% of different distress. So, the numbers are there, and these are just preliminary, we know.
AMY GOODMAN: Here in the United States, tens of millions of Americans say the coronavirus is harming their mental health, with more than a quarter of Americans polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation reporting a, quote, “major impact.” A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000% increase in April compared with the same time last year. Calls to suicide hotlines are massively up.
Well, for more on the psychological effects of the pandemic and the isolation and economic crisis resulting from the global lockdown, we’re joined by Andrew Solomon, professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University, an award-winning author of several books on mental illness, including his widely acclaimed memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. His best-selling book, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He wrote a recent piece in The New York Times headlined “When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone, Anxious and Depressed” and a story for The Guardian, “For those of us with depression, coronavirus is a double crisis.”
Andrew Solomon, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. If you could start off by talking about this double crisis that people are experiencing, not only in the United States, but around the world?
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. And listening to the headlines as you read them earlier, it would be difficult not to be in crisis of one kind or another.
When I talk about a double crisis, I’m talking about these two problems, one of which is that we are all afraid of the virus itself. It feels like the angel of death is waiting outside our front door. It feels like people we know are dying. We’re going into, many of us, some form of economic crisis. There’s a great deal that’s going wrong that’s specifically about the virus.
And then the other piece of the crisis is that the response to the virus is primarily to shelter at home and to shelter with a very limited group of people or alone, and the isolation is taking a terrible toll. Human beings are social animals. And being reduced, in effect, to either a very small circle of people, which can be stressful, or to total loneliness has additional adverse mental health consequences.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Andrew Solomon, could you also talk about — you’ve mentioned the fact that as this mental health crisis unfolds in the U.S., there are certain people who are less likely to access care: poor communities across the U.S. Could you explain why that is? And this is happening as many local community mental health centers are facing many financial pressures, as a result of which they’re cutting programs to help people in their communities.
ANDREW SOLOMON: Absolutely. In general, people who are less economically privileged are less likely to have their mental health problems diagnosed or treated, less likely to have them diagnosed because the basis for diagnosing depression is often that you feel really terrible despite having quite a pleasant life. And if you have a very actively unpleasant life and you feel terrible all the time, you’re unlikely to recognize that the way you feel may be the result of or a symptom of mental illness, and instead you’ll think it’s merely commensurate with your circumstances.
But even for poorer people who are able to get a diagnosis, the lack of access to mental healthcare remains shocking in the United States. There was a Mental Health Parity Act that went through some years ago. It’s full of loopholes. It’s a sort of Swiss cheese of an act. And people who don’t have decent health insurance and who don’t have access to so-called higher-quality doctors and teaching hospitals and so on are likely, in most instances, to go untreated. They can call hotlines some of the time. They can sort of patch together little bits of response. But they aren’t going to get the kind of steady, focused treatment that might allow them to come away from their mental illness and to emerge better able to contend with the very real challenges they face in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Andrew, could you talk about, in this context, the effect of the economic crisis on mental health? During the 2008 financial crisis, a study found that for every percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, there was about a 1.6% increase in the suicide rate. And now we’re looking at tens of millions, almost 30 million people, unemployed in the U.S. — a place, incidentally, which has very high rates of suicide already. I mean, rates around the world have generally been coming down, but in the U.S. they’ve steadily been increasing since 1999.
ANDREW SOLOMON: Yes. The rate of suicide is shocking, and it remains shockingly high in the United States.
In terms of the financial crisis, you know, it’s difficult to be dealing with the two primary components that affect everyone, which are fear of getting sick or of losing people you love, and the problem of negotiating isolation. But when you add to those two already-existing difficulties financial collapse and ruin, you’re in a really desperate place.
And there are obviously huge numbers of people who have no idea whether they’re going to be able to feed themselves over a longer-term period of time. You know, the jobs that have been lost are not all going to return the minute that the economy reopens. And the economy reopening is going to be a very bumpy and problematic process. You talked about it a bit in the headlines today.
So, you have a huge number of people who are facing not only the kind of fantastical concerns of the virus itself and not only loss, but who are also looking at being deprived and possibly having lives in which they’ll never be able to afford anything again. And, of course, we don’t have a safety net in the United States. And that’s part of why the financial crisis generated so much trouble and such high rates of depression and even of suicide.
And I should say, in relation to suicide, that there is a tendency to think that physical health is the urgent problem right now and that mental health is a sort of luxury. But actually, there are many people who, because they have poor mental health, will be driven either to lives of desperation, that may continue to escalate, or to acts of suicide. I’ve already heard about people, who already had some degree of mental illness, who have found the isolation so difficult and the fear so overwhelming, that they have in fact ended up killing themselves. And so, that increasing rate of suicide reflects a very stark reality. And for people who are looking also at financial ruin, the temptations of suicide are terribly proximate.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew, you write, “When everyone else is experiencing depression and anxiety, real, clinical mental illness can get erased.” If you can explain what you mean? And following up on your point about suicide, so let’s talk about what can be done right now. What are you advising? What are you counseling?
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, I would say that there are essentially four responses to the current situation. Some people are very emotionally robust and seem to be able to handle it relatively gracefully. Some people are having a bit more trouble and require what I think of as psychiatric first aid. They need to regulate their eating. They need to regulate their sleep. They need not to become complete news junkies 24 hours a day. They need, in a variety of other ways, to moderate their behavior.
Then there are people who have never experienced mental illness before, who are being pushed up into mental illness at this moment by the experiences they have. And there, we have to look at the very tricky thing, which is: How do we separate rational anxiety and distress from a clinical condition? And the line can be very blurry, and it varies from person to person.
And finally, we have the people who already had mental illness, who are now developing what I’ve called and many clinicians call a double depression, in which underlying depression and anxiety are suddenly now escalated to the complete crisis point, to the point where people are contemplating suicide, to the point where people are unable to function, to the point where people who have lost their jobs are unable to fill out the paperwork to get benefits that they may require. Those are people who have got really serious and problematical mental illness.
In terms of advice, you know, the best advice is that depression is, on the one hand, a terrible and overwhelming problem, and, on the other hand, quite a treatable problem. So if you’re able to access mental healthcare, you should do it. And you should understand that it isn’t a failure, and it doesn’t mean that you’ve collapsed unduly, and it doesn’t mean you can’t deal with stresses other people can deal with. If you’re suffering and you’re in anguish and you’re in pain, there are treatments available, and you should take advantage of them.
But that goes back to our earlier point, which is that there are people who are in a good position to take advantage of the mental illness challenges by going to a good teaching hospital, by finding a good doctor and by taking medication and engaging in psychotherapy. And there are a lot of people for whom those things feel unavailable, and the prospect of trying to access them, even for people who theoretically should have some level of care, is completely overwhelming. So we need very much to try to support those populations.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Andrew Solomon, one of the reasons that people don’t access mental healthcare, even when they need it, is that there’s still an enormous stigma attached to mental illness. I mean, you mentioned earlier that mental healthcare is viewed as a luxury, and physical health is privileged over mental health, despite the obviously often lethal effect of mental illness. So, could you talk about that, the stigma attached to mental illness? And also, in fact, some healthcare clinicians have said that this pandemic, because it’s producing such widespread mental suffering, may actually reduce the stigma attached to mental illness. Your response?
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, if we reduce the stigma attached to mental illness, that will be the elusive silver lining in the hideous cloud we find ourselves in right now. And I’m very hopeful that that may happen. I mean, the statistics that you read out at the beginning, that some 40% of Americans are now reporting mental health complaints, I think, is indicative. If 40% of Americans are experiencing this, it’s difficult for it to remain stigmatized in the way that it did when it was a lower percentage. But the percentage has always been higher than people believe. And I’ve sometimes called depression the family secret that everybody has.
I have found, over the years since I’ve started working on depression, people will say to me, “Oh, don’t you find that people sort of are laughing at you behind your back? Don’t you worry about the self-exposure that was involved in writing about your own experience with depression?” And my nearly universal experience is that everyone I meet says, “I’ve been so worried about my wife. She’s having a really difficult time,” or “My brother did such and such,” or “I myself have been in treatment, but I’m not sure I’m getting the right treatment,” that this is really all over the place and that it touches everyone.
Now it touches more than everyone. And in many countries, there have been real moves to respond to that. Even in China, which we don’t think of as progressive on mental health issues, when the virus surfaced in Wuhan, the government moved enormous numbers of mental health professionals to Wuhan to try to help people get through that trial and that trauma.
In the United States, we kept focusing on school closures and on all of these other things that are terribly important, but without giving any federal attention whatsoever to the mental health crisis. And so, I think that reinforces the stigma. I think if we had a president who was able to stand up and say, “This is affecting almost everyone, one way or another, directly or indirectly. It’s an absolute crisis. It requires attention and response,” that the stigma would evaporate relatively rapidly because of the sheer population numbers. As long as the government continues to ignore this problem, even though some state governments are responding to it, I think that the stigma remains and that people have a sense of failure.
But I often say to people, “In the first place, you should get treatment, because if you don’t, your condition might escalate, and you might end up killing yourselves. But in the second place, you should get treatment because right now you’re 37 years old, and you’re never going to be 37 years old again. And if you use up the next year feeling terribly depressed, you’re going to have years and years ahead of you of having to negotiate the aftermath of that depressive episode and having a possibly recurrent depression, and you’re going to have missed the year when you were 37 and when you really needed your resources to deal with isolation and to deal with losing people you love and to deal with financial crisis. And we can’t afford not to be at our strongest and best as we deal with those very real and immediate problems.”
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Andrew Solomon, professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University, award-winning author of the books Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. In a moment, we’re going to talk with him about children dealing with this pandemic, and also his book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.
I wanted to ask you about the doctor who took her own life, a top ER doctor, in April, who treated coronavirus patients in New York, died by suicide. Dr. Lorna Breen was the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital but had been staying with her family in Virginia at the time of her death. She herself had contracted the coronavirus and had to leave her position to recover from the illness. Her family blames her job for her death. Her dad, in an interview — she had described harrowing scenes from the hospital — said, “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was,” said her father, Dr. Philip Breen. He added, “She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”
Andrew Solomon, can you comment on her death and the pressure that healthcare professionals are facing right now? You refer to this, saying, “We’re used to dealing with sick people and seeing terrible things,” talking about doctors and nurses, “but what’s devastating with COVID is the sheer volume. It’s like drinking from a poisonous fire hydrant.”
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, I think that the first thing to say is that she was a hero and that we should all be breathless with admiration for somebody who was willing to work so hard in this area, in which, relatively speaking, there are still so few thanks, and who was willing to put herself on the line until she got to the point of that despair.
But, obviously, the despair itself is catastrophic and terrifying. I mean, mental health professionals are under pressure. Physical health professionals are actually seeing people die. People become doctors, by and large, because they want to help people and make them better. And here come these vast numbers of people for whom we can do virtually nothing. And instead of being able to help them and make them better, there’s a sort of vague effort to do some kind of palliative care as you watch them die in front of you and then pack them into big refrigerated trucks. The stress of it is enormous.
I would emphasize that there’s also a lot of stress for people like grocery store workers. There’s a lot of stress for people who are in any of the areas in which there’s a lot of exposure. And the stress is partly vulnerability to the illness.
And then I would add another layer, which we haven’t talked about so far, which is that we don’t really understand very well the full functioning of the coronavirus. There are people who have been dying of strokes that appear to be related to coronavirus. I would suggest that it’s possible that it also can have an effect, at least in some people, on mental health by having a direct organic effect on the brain.
It’s very nice that everyone opens their windows and bangs pots and pans in appreciation of healthcare workers in New York and in many other cities scattered around the country. It’s important that those people be acknowledged. But acknowledging them doesn’t take away from the desperation that you feel having something that’s so widespread and so untreatable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Andrew, many people have said that — warned that just like hospitals were completely overwhelmed at the start of this pandemic, the mental health industry will also be overwhelmed by the imminent mental health crisis. So could you talk about the levels of care different communities in the U.S. can access, and what some of the difficulties are with accessing mental healthcare even for those who want to seek it who have insurance, who are in places where mental healthcare is readily acceptable, but still they’re not able to afford it or get to it?
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, there are so many layers to the problem of mental healthcare in the United States that existed before we got to this pandemic. And now, of course, they’re all looking even worse.
We don’t have enough people in the field of mental healthcare. The people who are in the field of mental healthcare often deal with insurance that essentially requires that they see five or six patients an hour. You can’t understand what somebody’s mental health problems are in 10 minutes, much less figure out an appropriate means of treatment. There are a lot of people who come in saying that they have a mental health complaint, they’re given medication and sent home with it without any further conversation. If the reason that your mental health has escalated to this point is because of anxiety about being locked in and is because of loneliness and is because of fear of the illness and is for all of those other reasons, you need to be able to interact and exchange points of view about them and have someone who can sort out for you what constitutes a neurotic response and what constitutes serious mental illness and what constitutes a reasonable response to exactly what’s going on.
So, it’s partly that we don’t have enough people in the field. It’s partly that it’s difficult to access the people in the field, even if you’re in a position in which your insurance covers it. It’s also that you have to be able to self-diagnose and be willing, despite the stigma that we talked about a moment ago, to go in and say, “I have a serious mental health problem, and I want to figure out how I can get better.” And making that assertion is already very difficult. And, of course, there are all of the people who, even if they could make that assertion, because of insurance problems and unemployment and so on, aren’t able to access mental healthcare at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew Solomon, you’ve warned that “People with pre-existing pulmonary illnesses drop dead of this thing. People with previously existing mood disorders will die of it, too, if mostly in a slower and less obvious ways.” If you could address this and also your own experience, which you so painfully, honestly, authentically deal with in so much of your writing, your own experiences with depression?
ANDREW SOLOMON: Well, people dropping dead of it are all of the people who are dying because they end up committing suicide, like the brave doctor we just spoke about; the people who are dying because when you’re depressed, your immune system is depressed, as well, and people become more physically vulnerable to the virus; the people who are dying because when you have severe depression, your ability to take care of yourself dwindles, and people end up being careless and going out without a mask and standing too close to other people and so on and so forth; the people who develop touch deprivation, in which the absence of physical contact with other human beings pushes them over the edge and leads them into damaging behavior. So there are many, many ways in which this mental health problem becomes a serious one that can lead to destroyed lives and even to people dying — people dying of the virus who don’t even have it.
My own experience, historically, is that in 1994, a few years after my mother died, I developed a very acute and serious depression. I didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time. I was determined, because of the stigma, I suppose, that I would deal with this on my own. And I eventually reached the point at which I was almost unable to do anything, and I was lying in bed unable even to pick up the phone and ask for help. And then I finally realized something had to be done. And so I went, and I sought treatment. And then, like so many other people, I sought treatment, and I thought, “OK, I’m fine now,” and I went off the treatment, and I plummeted again. And I went back on treatment. Depression is a cyclical illness, and once you’ve acquired it, you’re likely to have episodes over and over again.
And what I would always say is that the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality. And it was vitality that I lost in those moments. It wasn’t that I felt sad all the time, though I did feel sad for a variety of reasons. It was that I no longer had the basic energy to go about the business of my life. I didn’t feel like I could get up, like I could cope with things, like I could go out, like I could talk to people. I found myself withdrawing more and more and more into the painful solitude of my own disturbed mind. And that tends to be what happens in depression.
And in this crisis, I think a lot of people start off having rational, reasonable fear and distress about what’s going on, and then it gets to the point where they are paralyzed. And they aren’t making themselves meals. And they either do nothing but sleep, or they can’t sleep at all. They do nothing but eat, or they can’t eat at all. They can’t bear the idea of exercise. They stop the even limited means of communication we have, by phone or by Zoom or by whatever people are using, and withdraw socially from their surroundings. Those would be some of the signs through which one could recognize the beginning of a depression. If you feel you’re not functioning well because of the way you feel, it may very well be depression. If you just feel upset, it may very well be a rational response to this tragic time.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andrew, before we conclude, I’d like to ask about the impact of this pandemic on children. Initially, it seemed that there was possibly one saving grace, which was that children didn’t appear to be vulnerable. But that, of course, has changed with the recent deaths of three young children right here in New York. So, could you talk — apart from the illness itself, what are the broader effects of the pandemic and the resulting lockdown, isolation, etc., on children of different ages?
ANDREW SOLOMON: The effect on children is enormous. My husband and I have a son who’s 11, who’s here with us in our quarantine that we’re living in. And I’m very much struck by the fact that the continuity of my friendships or of my husband’s lies, to a large extent, in verbal communication. And so, if we’re able to see and talk to our friends on Zoom and elsewhere, we can more or less feel that we’re keeping in touch.
The fabric of children’s friendships is in doing things together. And so, children who are deprived of the ability to do things together don’t have that much to say to one another when they call one another, and so their friendships themselves lose some of their fabric and substance. And the children are therefore missing not only some of the educational opportunities of school, but also the social situation of school. And I think if we do this for a year, and my son, who was 10 when we started, ends up being nearly 12 by the time that we’re finished, what are the modes of development that he will have missed?
Now, in addition to that, children are not stupid, and they can understand that this situation is unnatural and bizarre. Some children are able to put a good face on it; some children aren’t. It’s an enormous stress on them to recognize this. And the biggest stress on the children often is the condition of their parents. There was an experiment done, a study done, some years ago, in which a researcher named Myrna Weissman tried to determine what the best way was to treat childhood depression. And after trying 15 different things in a very large controlled study, the thing that was most effective in helping children was to treat their mothers. And so, the mental illness of parents bleeds over into the mental illness of children. Even just the stress and distress of parents bleeds over into the condition of children.
And now with this news that the disease may in fact be fatal for children or may make them very, very sick, contrary to what we previously heard, we have to isolate our children more, and we have to take more precautions. And we’re less likely to get back to school and less likely to go back to anything like what our children had come to experience as normal life. And that’s a very toxic situation psychologically, as well as an anxiety-producing one physically.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew Solomon, we thank you so much for spending this time with us, author, professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University. We’re going to link to your pieces, in The New York Times, headlined “When the Pandemic Leaves Us Alone, Anxious and Depressed”; in The Guardian, “For those of us with depression, coronavirus is a double crisis.”
In the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. That’s 1-800-273-8255.
This is Democracy Now! This breaking news: The unemployment figures are out. Nearly 3 million U.S. workers applied for unemployment last week, with more than 36 million total applications in two months. And that’s an underestimate of the numbers of those who are unemployed.
When we come back, we look at the tremendous emotional toll the coronavirus is taking on families when loved ones are forced to battle COVID alone in hospitals or at home. Stay with us.


truthout--2020-05-14--Trump Admin Says New Bailout Will Help 35 Million Americans. It Probably Won’t.

Within a few weeks , the Federal Reserve will start a $ 600 billion lending program that the Trump administration says will help 40,000 midsized businesses that employ 35 million Americans .
The Main Street Lending Program is the next marquee effort of the Coronavirus Aid , Relief and Economic Security Act , which Congress passed in March .
It is set to begin after weeks of criticism of the first , the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses .
While it ’ s too early to judge a program that hasn ’ t begun , the Main Street effort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flaws of the paycheck program , and it has added some new ones .
Experts from across the political spectrum already are concerned that the Main Street program will not come close to meeting the ambitious goals touted by the administration .
They worry it will move too slowly , that lenders won ’ t embrace it and that companies won ’ t seek out the loans because they ’ re not sure whether they ’ ll be able to pay them back .
“ My fear is that no one will lend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Glenn Hubbard , an economist at Columbia Business School who served in the George W. Bush administration .
Even if companies do get Main Street loans , there is nothing in the program stopping them from continuing mass layoffs .
Bankers , former government officials and academics from across the political spectrum told ProPublica that direct support for workers and businesses , not just loans , might be more effective .
The CARES Act , however , requires that the money appropriated by Congress be used for loans , not grants .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ provide more aid , with negotiations stalled over another economic relief package .
During an online event Wednesday , Fed Chair Jay Powell called the Main Street program “ unique in our history ” and “ operationally very complex.
” “ It ’ s an incredibly diverse group of companies , very diverse industries and credit needs , ” Powell said .
“ And we ’ re trying to create products with Main Street that address as broad a swath of those needs as we possibly can.
” The Treasury did not respond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , small companies applied to banks for government loans that would be forgiven if they used most of the money to keep workers on payroll .
Main Street , in contrast , is a pure loan program designed to make sure that companies with solid business models make it through lockdowns required to stop the pandemic .
Recipients have a year before they have to start paying back the loan , which can range from $ 500,000 all the way up to $ 200 million , and they ’ re barred from issuing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year after the loan is paid back .
“ To go from the grants of the Paycheck Protection Program to a program that is straight lending is a problem , ” Hubbard said , explaining that these businesses need money without the need to pay it back with interest .
If the Main Street program is useful , it won ’ t be for businesses on literal Main Streets across America .
The minimum loan amount of $ 500,000 makes it inaccessible to the small businesses — the local pizzeria or day care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America .
And the Fed ’ s idea of what constitutes a midsized business is many orders larger than is commonly meant by the term ; the National Center for the Middle Market at Ohio State University , for example , defines the upper bound as $ 1 billion in revenue .
But in the Main Street program , there ’ s not much limit on how large a company can be .
On the high end , the loans will be available to companies with up to 15,000 employees or annual revenue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ According to Fortune , only 539 individual companies in the entire country brought in more than $ 5 billion last year .
One problem stems from the drafting of the law , which proposes some restrictions but also includes a major escape clause .
In the CARES Act , lawmakers wrote that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin should “ endeavor to seek ” to create a loan program for medium-sized businesses that would require several conditions : Companies could not oppose union organizing or break their union contracts ; recipients would be required to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s workforce as of Feb. 1 ; and they could not outsource or offshore jobs until two years after the term of the loan .
Democrats celebrated their efforts on the behalf of working people .
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed his party had secured “ robust worker protections attached to all federal loans for businesses.
” In fact , those conditions were little more than suggestions , which the Trump administration and the Fed quickly cast aside .
The Fed ’ s Main Street program includes none of those protections ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make “ commercially reasonable ” efforts to keep employees .
There is essentially nothing stopping companies that take the loans from laying off more workers .
Schumer ’ s office did not respond to requests for comment .
Some observers believe there ’ s a legitimate reason the Treasury and the Fed opted not to attach worker protections to the Main Street loans : If borrowers are locked into their current workforce structure , they won ’ t be able to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world .
Manufacturers might need to automate more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers and avoid a return of the virus .
Companies also may be in a better position to rehire more of their workers if they use a Fed loan to retrofit their operations to better control infections .
To progressives and labor unions , however , there ’ s little point in subsidizing loans if the companies receiving them don ’ t use the cash to support jobs .
“ If they get the money , and then they lay people off , or they move their operations to another country where there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why is it in [ taxpayers ’ ] interest to be giving them money ?
” said Dan Mauer , head of government affairs for the Communications Workers of America .
As the last deep recession demonstrated , it ’ s much harder to escape from unemployment than it is to get a new job while you ’ ve still got the old one .
And requiring that the loan be spent to support jobs may reduce the chances that companies spend the money on projects that instead primarily benefit creditors or shareholders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I ’ ve asked the Fed to impose these requirements on bailout recipients , ” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement to ProPublica .
“ Anything less would represent a giveaway to large corporations and CEOs to use this money to enrich themselves.
” The rules got even more friendly to large corporations as the Main Street program evolved .
After initially announcing plans to set up the program , the Fed fielded 2,200 comments from interested parties ( which it has refused to disclose publicly ) .
In late April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boosting the workforce size cap for borrowers to 15,000 employees and the maximum loan amount to $ 200 million .
It also allowed companies to qualify with a rosier calculation of their earnings , dispensed with the requirement that companies say they needed the money because of impacts from COVID-19 and allowed the loans to be used for refinancing existing debt .
Thus , the program became more attractive both to less healthy companies that might not otherwise have qualified , and to more healthy companies that might simply find the interest rates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for American Progress , calls that a waste of money .
“ We shouldn ’ t be providing cheap government dollars to companies that either don ’ t need it or are facing severe difficulties completely unrelated to COVID , ” Gelzinis said , noting that highly indebted oil and gas companies in particular lobbied for the rules to be loosened .
Also , allowing Main Street loans to refinance existing debt may improve a company ’ s financial standing , but not generate new spending that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fed loans are used to refinance , the money flows back to lender ’ s balance sheets , not the economy , ” said Amias Gerety , who served as the Treasury Department ’ s acting assistant secretary for financial institutions until January 2017 .
“ Allowing companies to repay earlier debt changes the character of the program , almost as significantly as making the program more available to larger companies.
” Another problem is the mechanism by which the program will be implemented : through banks .
The Federal Reserve doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , as with the Paycheck Protection Program , banks will take on the responsibility of studying the finances and prospects of each business that wants a Main Street loan and decide whether to approve it .
To protect taxpayers and incentivize the banks to make good loans , the program requires banks to keep between 5 % and 15 % of the debt — and thus a portion of the risk — on their own books .
But that clause also deter banks from participating .
Putting their own money on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christy Hester , director of growth and development at the Independent Bankers Association of Texas .
“ It means they ’ ve got accounting and reporting requirements , ” she said .
“ Just setting up the accounting side of that and the servicing side of that , if it ’ s not already set up , that ’ s a pretty big burden for a small community bank.
” The Main Street program compensates banks by allowing them to charge an origination fee of up to 1 % of the loan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s so difficult to assess the risk of lending money in the climate of pandemic-induced uncertainty , that might not be enough .
It ’ s not surprising that banks would prefer to receive higher fees and take on less risk .
But it does mean that running the program through the banks could slow things down .
So far , only a handful of banks have mentioned in their regulatory filings that they intend to participate ; most say only that they are considering it .
In its response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Bankers Association urged further changes to boost demand for the program and bank participation , like lowering the minimum loan size even more and relaxing the loan terms even further .
Despite the cash crunch facing thousands of companies that have seen their businesses drastically curtailed , it ’ s not clear that the Main Street Lending Program is the right medicine .
Under the initial plan announced in early April , the minimum loan amount was $ 1 million and would only be accessible to companies with at least $ 165,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that for companies with debt .
When the Fed and Treasury revised the Main Street terms late last month , the only concession to small businesses was dropping the minimum loan amount to $ 500,000 .
But that ’ s still far higher than the $ 100,000 that the community bank trade association had asked for .
“ Otherwise , ” the Independent Community Bankers of America warned in an April 17 comment , “ Main Street businesses and community banks will not participate.
” Even if they could qualify for the Main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about their ability to repay a loan of more than a half-million dollars and having a huge debt burden might hamstring their ability to invest after the pandemic has passed .
Grants might be more likely to help businesses survive what looks to be a prolonged economic downturn .
“ Borrowers have to be confident that they ’ re going to be able to generate cash flow to pay back the principal and interest , ” a senior loan industry official said .
“ How can you project that right now during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Protection Program , the central role of banks could again give a leg up to their existing clients rather than the neediest or most deserving businesses , according to industry observers .
That ’ s because banks must approve the loans , so they might favor companies for whom much of the time-consuming work of underwriting and due diligence is already done .
Kathryn Judge , a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in financial regulation , said that , as the program gets underway , it will be important to scrutinize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as how companies that get the loans treat employees .
“ Not just the Fed , but Congress and oversight bodies should make clear that if you ’ re taking these funds , we have the ability to come in and ask you to show what were those ‘ commercially reasonable ’ efforts ’ to keep workers , ” Judge said .
So far , however , those efforts haven ’ t been terribly effective .
In mid-April , Schumer and Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee sent a long letter to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including “ What is the Federal Reserve ’ s strategy ?
” and “ Will the strategy help protect workers ?
” The letter , which requested answers by April 24 , has received no response .

Experts from across the political spectrum fear the program won’t reach enough businesses or save enough jobs.
Within a few weeks, the Federal Reserve will start a $600 billion lending program that the Trump administration says will help 40,000 midsized businesses that employ 35 million Americans.
The Main Street Lending Program is the next marquee effort of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which Congress passed in March. It is set to begin after weeks of criticism of the first, the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses. While it’s too early to judge a program that hasn’t begun, the Main Street effort appears to have replicated some of the flaws of the paycheck program, and it has added some new ones.
Experts from across the political spectrum already are concerned that the Main Street program will not come close to meeting the ambitious goals touted by the administration. They worry it will move too slowly, that lenders won’t embrace it and that companies won’t seek out the loans because they’re not sure whether they’ll be able to pay them back.
“My fear is that no one will lend and no one will borrow,” said Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School who served in the George W. Bush administration.
Even if companies do get Main Street loans, there is nothing in the program stopping them from continuing mass layoffs. Bankers, former government officials and academics from across the political spectrum told ProPublica that direct support for workers and businesses, not just loans, might be more effective. The CARES Act, however, requires that the money appropriated by Congress be used for loans, not grants. And so far Congress has declined to provide more aid, with negotiations stalled over another economic relief package.
During an online event Wednesday, Fed Chair Jay Powell called the Main Street program “unique in our history” and “operationally very complex.”
“It’s an incredibly diverse group of companies, very diverse industries and credit needs,” Powell said. “And we’re trying to create products with Main Street that address as broad a swath of those needs as we possibly can.”
The Treasury did not respond to questions.
Under the paycheck program, small companies applied to banks for government loans that would be forgiven if they used most of the money to keep workers on payroll. Main Street, in contrast, is a pure loan program designed to make sure that companies with solid business models make it through lockdowns required to stop the pandemic. Recipients have a year before they have to start paying back the loan, which can range from $500,000 all the way up to $200 million, and they’re barred from issuing dividends or buying back stock until a year after the loan is paid back.
“To go from the grants of the Paycheck Protection Program to a program that is straight lending is a problem,” Hubbard said, explaining that these businesses need money without the need to pay it back with interest.
If the Main Street program is useful, it won’t be for businesses on literal Main Streets across America. The minimum loan amount of $500,000 makes it inaccessible to the small businesses — the local pizzeria or day care center — currently gasping for cash across America. And the Fed’s idea of what constitutes a midsized business is many orders larger than is commonly meant by the term; the National Center for the Middle Market at Ohio State University, for example, defines the upper bound as $1 billion in revenue.
But in the Main Street program, there’s not much limit on how large a company can be. On the high end, the loans will be available to companies with up to 15,000 employees or annual revenue of up to $5 billion. According to Fortune, only 539 individual companies in the entire country brought in more than $5 billion last year.
Lax Conditions
One problem stems from the drafting of the law, which proposes some restrictions but also includes a major escape clause.
In the CARES Act, lawmakers wrote that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin should “endeavor to seek” to create a loan program for medium-sized businesses that would require several conditions: Companies could not oppose union organizing or break their union contracts; recipients would be required to restore 90% of the company’s workforce as of Feb. 1; and they could not outsource or offshore jobs until two years after the term of the loan.
Democrats celebrated their efforts on the behalf of working people. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed his party had secured “robust worker protections attached to all federal loans for businesses.”
In fact, those conditions were little more than suggestions, which the Trump administration and the Fed quickly cast aside. The Fed’s Main Street program includes none of those protections; instead, it requires companies only to make “commercially reasonable” efforts to keep employees. There is essentially nothing stopping companies that take the loans from laying off more workers.
Schumer’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Some observers believe there’s a legitimate reason the Treasury and the Fed opted not to attach worker protections to the Main Street loans: If borrowers are locked into their current workforce structure, they won’t be able to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world. Manufacturers might need to automate more, for example, to physically separate workers and avoid a return of the virus. Companies also may be in a better position to rehire more of their workers if they use a Fed loan to retrofit their operations to better control infections.
To progressives and labor unions, however, there’s little point in subsidizing loans if the companies receiving them don’t use the cash to support jobs.
“If they get the money, and then they lay people off, or they move their operations to another country where there’s less restrictive worker protections, why is it in [taxpayers’] interest to be giving them money?” said Dan Mauer, head of government affairs for the Communications Workers of America.
As the last deep recession demonstrated, it’s much harder to escape from unemployment than it is to get a new job while you’ve still got the old one. And requiring that the loan be spent to support jobs may reduce the chances that companies spend the money on projects that instead primarily benefit creditors or shareholders, such as acquiring other businesses.
“I’ve asked the Fed to impose these requirements on bailout recipients,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement to ProPublica. “Anything less would represent a giveaway to large corporations and CEOs to use this money to enrich themselves.”
The rules got even more friendly to large corporations as the Main Street program evolved.
After initially announcing plans to set up the program, the Fed fielded 2,200 comments from interested parties (which it has refused to disclose publicly). In late April, the Fed announced an overhaul, boosting the workforce size cap for borrowers to 15,000 employees and the maximum loan amount to $200 million. It also allowed companies to qualify with a rosier calculation of their earnings, dispensed with the requirement that companies say they needed the money because of impacts from COVID-19 and allowed the loans to be used for refinancing existing debt.
Thus, the program became more attractive both to less healthy companies that might not otherwise have qualified, and to more healthy companies that might simply find the interest rates appealing. Gregg Gelzinis, a senior policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, calls that a waste of money.
“We shouldn’t be providing cheap government dollars to companies that either don’t need it or are facing severe difficulties completely unrelated to COVID,” Gelzinis said, noting that highly indebted oil and gas companies in particular lobbied for the rules to be loosened.
Also, allowing Main Street loans to refinance existing debt may improve a company’s financial standing, but not generate new spending that would stimulate growth.
“If the Fed loans are used to refinance, the money flows back to lender’s balance sheets, not the economy,” said Amias Gerety, who served as the Treasury Department’s acting assistant secretary for financial institutions until January 2017. “Allowing companies to repay earlier debt changes the character of the program, almost as significantly as making the program more available to larger companies.”
Banks Might Not Lend
Another problem is the mechanism by which the program will be implemented: through banks.
The Federal Reserve doesn’t normally lend to nonfinancial companies. So, as with the Paycheck Protection Program, banks will take on the responsibility of studying the finances and prospects of each business that wants a Main Street loan and decide whether to approve it.
To protect taxpayers and incentivize the banks to make good loans, the program requires banks to keep between 5% and 15% of the debt — and thus a portion of the risk — on their own books. But that clause also deter banks from participating.
Putting their own money on the line could be an obstacle, said Christy Hester, director of growth and development at the Independent Bankers Association of Texas. “It means they’ve got accounting and reporting requirements,” she said. “Just setting up the accounting side of that and the servicing side of that, if it’s not already set up, that’s a pretty big burden for a small community bank.”
The Main Street program compensates banks by allowing them to charge an origination fee of up to 1% of the loan, plus an annual servicing fee. Because it’s so difficult to assess the risk of lending money in the climate of pandemic-induced uncertainty, that might not be enough.
It’s not surprising that banks would prefer to receive higher fees and take on less risk. But it does mean that running the program through the banks could slow things down.
So far, only a handful of banks have mentioned in their regulatory filings that they intend to participate; most say only that they are considering it. In its response to the Fed’s overhaul, the American Bankers Association urged further changes to boost demand for the program and bank participation, like lowering the minimum loan size even more and relaxing the loan terms even further.
Borrowers Might Not Borrow
Despite the cash crunch facing thousands of companies that have seen their businesses drastically curtailed, it’s not clear that the Main Street Lending Program is the right medicine.
Under the initial plan announced in early April, the minimum loan amount was $1 million and would only be accessible to companies with at least $165,000 in annual earnings, and more than that for companies with debt.
When the Fed and Treasury revised the Main Street terms late last month, the only concession to small businesses was dropping the minimum loan amount to $500,000. But that’s still far higher than the $100,000 that the community bank trade association had asked for. “Otherwise,” the Independent Community Bankers of America warned in an April 17 comment, “Main Street businesses and community banks will not participate.”
Even if they could qualify for the Main Street program, plenty of businesses worry about their ability to repay a loan of more than a half-million dollars and having a huge debt burden might hamstring their ability to invest after the pandemic has passed. Grants might be more likely to help businesses survive what looks to be a prolonged economic downturn.
“Borrowers have to be confident that they’re going to be able to generate cash flow to pay back the principal and interest,” a senior loan industry official said. “How can you project that right now during the crisis?”
As with the Paycheck Protection Program, the central role of banks could again give a leg up to their existing clients rather than the neediest or most deserving businesses, according to industry observers. That’s because banks must approve the loans, so they might favor companies for whom much of the time-consuming work of underwriting and due diligence is already done.
Kathryn Judge, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in financial regulation, said that, as the program gets underway, it will be important to scrutinize the role of the banks as well as how companies that get the loans treat employees.
“Not just the Fed, but Congress and oversight bodies should make clear that if you’re taking these funds, we have the ability to come in and ask you to show what were those ‘commercially reasonable’ efforts’ to keep workers,” Judge said.
So far, however, those efforts haven’t been terribly effective.
In mid-April, Schumer and Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee sent a long letter to the Fed and Treasury asking basic questions including “What is the Federal Reserve’s strategy?” and “Will the strategy help protect workers?” The letter, which requested answers by April 24, has received no response.
Jeff Ernsthausen contributed reporting.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
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truthout--2020-05-14--Trump Wanted Less Testing Because Jared Kushner Said It Would Spook Wall Street

On March 6 , President Donald Trump issued out the now-infamous proclamation about coronavirus testing , in order to ease rising fears about the disease .
“ Anybody that needs a test gets a test , they ’ re there , ” Trump said during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Almost 10 weeks later , that promise remains unfulfilled .
Indeed , Trump walked back on the promise just one week after making it , saying that not everyone in the country needed to be tested for COVID-19 .
Behind the scenes at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hinged on a different feature — not on whether the American people wanted or needed testing , but whether a broader number of tests would cause financial markets to react negatively .
According to reporting from The Financial Times , sources close to Trump say he was advised by his son-in-law Jared Kushner , who also serves as one of his top advisers , against the push for more testing .
Wall Street , Kushner argued according to that source , would not like knowing that more Americans were infected with the disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been the reason why it took Trump so long to finally order American manufacturing companies to start producing ventilators .
“ Jared [ Kushner ] had been arguing that testing too many people , or ordering too many ventilators , would spook the markets and so we just shouldn ’ t do it , ” the source alleged .
“ That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying .
He thinks they always exaggerate.
” Trump is reportedly hinging on having a good economy in place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his reelection campaign .
According to other sources , it ’ s the main reason why he ’ s making such a hard push to end social distancing across much of the country , with the idea being that reopening the economy will lead to positive financial numbers by November that voters can supposedly credit him with creating .
If Kushner ’ s advice to Trump was that more testing would scare the markets , it was apparently bad advice to give .
Stocks surged , for instance , in March when Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amped up .
But after it became apparent that testing capabilities weren ’ t where Trump said they were , markets took another plunge , and have plateaued for most of the past month .
The president may have received the hint on that front , understanding now that Americans and stock traders want to see better testing in place .
Trump has made efforts in recent days to suggest testing is at a high level in the United States .
“ We ’ ve prevailed on testing .
You never prevail when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when you have 80,000 people as of today , ” Trump said on Monday .
“ What I ’ m talking about is we have a great testing capacity now.
” Trump has also wrongly asserted that the U.S. leads the world in testing .
While we have indeed conducted more tests in terms of raw numbers , on a per capita basis we ’ re nowhere near the top , with dozens of countries presently ahead of us on that mark .
More than 9.6 million tests for coronavirus have been conducted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , accounting for less than 3 percent of the nation ’ s population .
According to the Harvard Global Health Institute , more than 900,000 individuals need to be tested per day in order for the economy to reopen in a safe way .
As of last week , the U.S. had achieved less than a third of that amount , around 248,000 tests per day .

On March 6, President Donald Trump issued out the now-infamous proclamation about coronavirus testing, in order to ease rising fears about the disease.
“Anybody that needs a test gets a test, they’re there,” Trump said during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Almost 10 weeks later, that promise remains unfulfilled. Indeed, Trump walked back on the promise just one week after making it, saying that not everyone in the country needed to be tested for COVID-19.
Behind the scenes at the White House, the debate on testing hinged on a different feature — not on whether the American people wanted or needed testing, but whether a broader number of tests would cause financial markets to react negatively.
According to reporting from The Financial Times, sources close to Trump say he was advised by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who also serves as one of his top advisers, against the push for more testing. Wall Street, Kushner argued according to that source, would not like knowing that more Americans were infected with the disease.
Kushner’s advice may also have been the reason why it took Trump so long to finally order American manufacturing companies to start producing ventilators.
“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it,” the source alleged. “That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.”
Trump is reportedly hinging on having a good economy in place as part of his political strategy during his reelection campaign. According to other sources, it’s the main reason why he’s making such a hard push to end social distancing across much of the country, with the idea being that reopening the economy will lead to positive financial numbers by November that voters can supposedly credit him with creating.
If Kushner’s advice to Trump was that more testing would scare the markets, it was apparently bad advice to give. Stocks surged, for instance, in March when Trump made the promise that testing would be amped up. But after it became apparent that testing capabilities weren’t where Trump said they were, markets took another plunge, and have plateaued for most of the past month.
The president may have received the hint on that front, understanding now that Americans and stock traders want to see better testing in place. Trump has made efforts in recent days to suggest testing is at a high level in the United States.
“We’ve prevailed on testing. You never prevail when you have 90,000 people, 100,000, when you have 80,000 people as of today,” Trump said on Monday. “What I’m talking about is we have a great testing capacity now.”
Trump has also wrongly asserted that the U.S. leads the world in testing. While we have indeed conducted more tests in terms of raw numbers, on a per capita basis we’re nowhere near the top, with dozens of countries presently ahead of us on that mark. More than 9.6 million tests for coronavirus have been conducted in the U.S. as of this week, accounting for less than 3 percent of the nation’s population.
According to the Harvard Global Health Institute, more than 900,000 individuals need to be tested per day in order for the economy to reopen in a safe way. As of last week, the U.S. had achieved less than a third of that amount, around 248,000 tests per day.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.