As a teenager, Paulina Castle struggled for years with suicidal thoughts. When her mental health was at its most fragile, she would isolate herself, spending days in her room alone.

“That’s the exact thing that makes you feel significantly worse,” the 26-year-old Denver woman said. “It creates a cycle where you’re constantly getting dug into a deeper hole.”

Part of her recovery involved forcing herself to leave her room to socialize or to exercise outside. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made all of that much harder. Instead of interacting with people on the street in her job as a political canvasser, she is working at home on the phone. And with social distancing rules in place, she has fewer opportunities to meet with friends.

“Since the virus started,” she said, “it’s been a lot easier to fall back into that cycle.”

Between the challenges of the pandemic, the social unrest and the economic crisis, mental health providers are warning that the need for behavioral health services is growing. Yet faced with budgetary shortfalls, Colorado is cutting spending on a number of mental health and substance use treatment programs.

Across

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the White House plans to pressure state governors and educators to reopen schools in the fall, despite a soaring rate of coronavirus infections in several states and an overall increase nationwide. 

“We’re very much going to put pressure on the governors and the schools to reopen,” Trump said at a White House event Tuesday on school reopenings. “Open your schools in the fall,” the president told attendees, who were seated close together despite the fact that very few were wearing masks.

The question of just how to reopen schools has become one of the thorniest issues of the entire national response to the deadly pandemic.

More than 50 million children attend school in the United States, and the near blanket closures of schools this spring forced millions of parents to become teachers overnight, often on top of holding down their own full-time jobs. 

As the traditional start of the school year approaches, there are few concrete plans in place at either the state or the federal level about how to open schools safely. And as the rate of coronavirus cases has soared to record levels in the past week, parents and educators

Months into the coronavirus pandemic, older adults are having a hard time envisioning their “new normal.”

Many remain fearful of catching the virus and plan to follow strict precautions — social distancing, wearing masks and gloves, limiting excursions to public places — for the indefinite future.

Mortality is no longer an abstraction for those who have seen friends and relatives die of COVID-19. Death has an immediate presence as never before.

Many people are grieving the loss of their old lives and would love nothing better than to pick up where they left off. Others are convinced their lives will never be the same.

“We’re at the cusp of a new world,” said Harry Hutson, 72, an organizational consultant and executive coach who lives in Baltimore.

He’s among nearly a dozen older adults who discussed the “new normal” in lengthy conversations. All acknowledged their vulnerability as states across the country lift stay-at-home orders. (Adults 65 and older are more likely to become critically ill if infected with the coronavirus.) Here’s some of what they said:

(Courtesy of Willetha and