Focus on resilient healthcare

The pandemic has been especially hard for children, teens and young adults. Those aged 18-30 were already at above-average risk of loneliness before COVID-19, but school and university disruptions and closures, along with limits on social interaction, have made things worse.

Reduced social contact and lost hours of schooling can have a lasting effect on children’s and young adults’plans and prospects and their mental health, to their detriment and that of their communities and countries.

> Supporting young people’s mental health through the COVID-19 crisis | Policy response
> The state of school education: One year into the COVID pandemic | Report

OECD countries have taken steps to increase mental health support, including more resources for phone support lines or flyers, better access to mental health services, and more mental health funding.

Beyond such crisis measures, governments should:

• foster an integrated, whole-of-society approach to mental health that involves both the public sector and employers

• adapt mental health policies to support young people

• assure continued access to existing mental health services and add new services or entitlements as needed

• raise awareness of how the workplace – including remote working – impacts mental health and promote mental health training for line managers and executives

• consider increasing mental health support for jobseekers through public employment services.

As the pandemic continues, nearly 70% of people in OECD countries say their government should be doing more to help. Governments have already put into place unprecedented support measures.

Today, they should continue to use all resources necessary to maintain income support for people and firms until economies can fully reopen. Going forward, countries can also turn to the OECD framework for benchmarking mental health systems performance, to help them ease the burden of mental ill health on individuals, societies and economies.