Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Editor’s note: This story contains references to suicide. 

During the pandemic, mental health services had to adapt, sometimes taking a higher caseload and switching to virtual counseling.

Anne Reagan, a child psychologist at Upstate University Hospital, witnessed COVID-19’s effect on mental health.

“Part of the struggle is that mental health services pre-COVID probably weren’t as robust as they needed to be, and then the demand increased,” Reagan said. 

Reagan and her colleague, Robert Gregory, the director of the Psychiatry High Risk Program and a professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, said that the hospital was flooded with requests for therapy appointments and hospital walk-ins as anxiety and depression levels rose among Syracuse residents. The number of people who may have had suicidal thoughts and attempts have also risen, Gregory said.

Shantel Guzman | Asst. Digital Editor

“Even though there’s been an increase in services, it’s still not quite able to keep up with demand,” Gregory said. “We’ve seen things be pretty rough actually, because demand has skyrocketed for mental health services.”

Zoom and other online applications have made virtual therapy possible, but Reagan believes it’s more difficult to interact with most patients via a screen. 

“Therapy is a lot about relationships and being in the room with people and personal connection. And so, as things opened up, I myself was very quick to switch back to in person as long as we could do it safely,” she said.

Dominique Walker, a Ph.D. candidate and member of the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Syracuse University, said online therapy is a positive turning point in the field.

At the beginning of the pandemic, accessibility became a challenge for people in the Syracuse community who didn’t have access to laptops or smartphones, Walker said. But Zoom also provided advantages such as limiting the need to find transportation to appointments. 

“It’s become more convenient too, because now you no longer have to drive to your therapy appointment, you can just log on to your computer or smartphone or even call your therapist,” she said.

Walker often feels invisible during her consultations with couples or families, who sometimes forget she’s there in the heat of a disagreement, she said.

“The most difficult part is that you’re not a presence in the room, so when people get reactive it’s very easy for them to walk away from the computer screen, and you can’t do anything,” Walker said. “It really took for me to be assertive, more direct when working with multiple people because they can forget that you’re there.”

University Hospital saw more severe cases associated with increased mental health issues during the pandemic, Reagan said. But with the threat of COVID-19 transmission looming high in hospitals, they limited visits to acute or chronic cases, shifting all other appointments online. 

“We know that isolation and disconnection is one of the biggest risk factors for suicide, and so the pandemic was like a perfect storm for that and potentially exacerbating problems for people who were on the edge already,” Gregory said. 

Rebuilding connections has been difficult at University Hospital as more and more people seek out mental health services, Reagan said. 

Walker credited this rise in demand for mental health services to increased transparency about mental health, especially during the pandemic.

“People now realize that, just like you go to the dentist to take care of your teeth, just like you go to the doctor to take care of your physical health, you go to see a therapist for your mental health,” she said. “It’s not that you have to go because something is wrong or because you’re somehow broken.”

Visit SuicideIsPreventable.org to learn about the warning signs for suicide and find local resources in your county. If you or someone you know may be at risk, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for immediate help.

Published on September 29, 2021 at 10:48 pm

Contact Katie: ksmcclel@syr.edu | @katie_mcclellan