The pandemic’s effect on Americans’ mental health was almost axiomatic. From the beginning, the uncertainty about COVID 19’s spread and ever-rising death toll, paired with lockdowns that left tens of millions jobless or facing severe income cutbacks, produced waves of anxiety and depression across the country — at levels four times those reported in 2019.
California was not spared, with 2 million jobs lost in the first months of the pandemic and more than 2.7 million overall. (The state has since returned to pre-pandemic job levels, though not all the same jobs were recovered.) Millions of households were thrown into financial or physical emergencies, and almost a quarter of Californians reported experiencing either severe or moderate psychological distress in 2020 alone.
