A big emphasis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the moment is mental health, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Since Covid, rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide have risen, along with substance use disorders. Helping Americans deal with these issues is a top priority for the CDC, according to Mandy Cohen, CDC director, in a recent talk at Johns Hopkins.

Cohen: Mental health we know was strained during an emergency, always is whether that's a hurricane or a pandemic, so we're seeing that play out in our data. More suicides unfortunately, more overdoses particularly as we're seeing more substances out in the market that are more potent. We’ve lost 100,000 people to overdose, 50,000 to suicide last year. We can do better and I think CDC's role there is to really bring that data visibility. You can't solve problems you don't see so we're really working on improving mental health.  :28

Cohen says taking continuous looks at the data helps to spot trends and informs efforts to intervene and to treat. Ideally study and analysis will provide more effective ways to prevent mental health issues and substance use disorder. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.