America’s opioid crisis spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic disruption, social isolation, and despair all helped drive fatal overdoses to one record number after another from 2020 to 2022.

Some health providers conduct suicide screening for all patients—and it’s beginning to make a difference. Pew is launching an effort to help make suicide prevention and care more routine. When Greg Whitesell was a junior at Arlee High School on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, he was a star basketball player. But he loved to play football as well. Against his parents’ wishes, he went to practice nearly every day and sustained concussions almost as frequently. One of them was particularly nasty.