According to experts, difficulties in accessing mental healthcare could be linked to excess deaths due to drug overdoses during the pandemic.

On Monday, the Bipartisan Policy Center and the polling firm Morning Consult released a survey of 2,200 adults that found many faced significant barriers in accessing mental healthcare. This follows a newly released study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found 10,433 excess drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during 2020.