the weight of the world

Beyond its physical threat, COVID-19 represents a mental and behavioral health crisis of incalculable depth and severity. Charlotte’s mental health professionals are trying to grasp how bad it could get—and how to help people who need it

- GREG LACOUR

Even before the virus, Julia Prentice felt as if the world would end. She’d suffered from severe depression for years—a product, she says, of a “complicated family situation” as she grew up.

She had managed it, though, even through her cross-country move with her husband, Edward, from the San Francisco Bay Area to Charlotte in March 2019. She’d found a new therapist as well, and it was after one especially intense session in December when an anxiety attack landed on her like a judgment.

As Prentice walked toward her car in the clinic parking lot, she suddenly began to cry and couldn’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath and felt certain she would die. Prentice calmed herself enough to drive the short distance to her home in Ballantyne, but more anxiety attacks followed in the next few days, and her therapist was booked for the next two weeks.

Through online research, Prentice discovered HopeWay, a nonprofit mental and behavioral health center in south Charlotte that opened in 2016. She stayed there as a patient for 10 days, then visited every day as an outpatient through February. By early March, she felt better. Her anxiety attacks largely ceased—just in time for the disruption and fear that COVID-19 ushered in.