News 12's Elizabeth Hashagen was joined by Dr. Lata McGinn to discuss mental health.

America's mental health crisis began long before COVID-19. We are seeing an increase in the amount of people struggling with their mental health after a year and a half of loss, stress, isolation and trauma.

A report from the World Health Organization found big increases in certain mental illnesses with the pandemic. The mental health impact of the pandemic has been huge, with prevalence of anxiety and depression more than double levels observed pre-crisis in most countries with available data, most notably in Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The mental health impact of the pandemic has been particularly hard for the doctors, nurses, long-term care workers, and other health care workers working in close proximity to patients.

Pediatricians say the mental health crisis among kids has become a national emergency. The grief, anxiety and depression children have experienced during the pandemic is welling over into classrooms and hallways, resulting in crying and disruptive behavior in many younger kids and increased violence and bullying among adolescents. For many other children, who keep their sadness and fear inside, the pressures of school have become too great.

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics showed that 140,000 children have lost a parent or grandparent caregiver to COVID-19. A majority of those children were kids of color.