Colorado’s approach is not the sort of rigorously tested, evidence-based model to which Ruzek

said disaster psychologists should aspire. Then again, “we’re sitting here with not a lot of
options,” says Matthew Boden, a research scientist in the Veterans Health Administration’s
mental-health and suicide-prevention unit. “Something is better than nothing.”

In any case, the full extent of the fallout will not come into focus for some time. Psychological
disorders can be slow to develop, and as a result, the Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry, which
Morganstein helped write, warns that demand for mental-health care may spike even as a
pandemic subsides. “If history is any indicator,” Morganstein says of COVID-19, “we should
expect a significant tail of mental-health effects, and those could be extraordinary.”