Modern medical science is making advances with record breaking speed in 2020. Whether it’s a vaccine from Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech or a treatment like Gilead’s (GILD) Remdesivir, doctors and researchers have focused on the life saving measures needed to prevent more deaths from the Covid-19 virus.

But, there are symptoms and health problems related to the virus and subsequent recession that can’t be solved with a vaccine or an antibody treatment. New York City’s First Lady Chirlane McCray is focused on those as she looks ahead to 2021.

“We can't separate the mind from the body, and there is no health without mental health,” she said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Presents. “We can't say that just because people aren't dying means that they're healthy. It takes a lot more than that, and we have the ability to direct more attention to this area and we should, because we're going to be living with the residual effects of this pandemic for a long time.”

McCray, whose husband Bill de Blasio has been New York City’s mayor since 2014, is a leading advocate for mental health. She created ThriveNYC to help those one in five adult New Yorkers likely to experience a mental health disorder in any given year — and that was before coronavirus.

“Before the pandemic, we were in crisis. We had so many more young people experiencing depression and anxiety, in many parts of our country, there was a rising suicide rate,” she said. “We were in an opioid epidemic. You don't hear much about that these days, but it hasn't gone away. And, of course, there's alcohol abuse, substance use disorders are probably on the rise. I don't know if people are actually paying attention to that, but the fact that people are isolated and not able to access those support groups, is really difficult for folks.”

“It has a huge effect on the bottom line”

For everyday citizens, McCray hopes to eliminate the stigma around mental health and help people realize it’s simply part of being human. For New York City’s powerful business community, McCray sees a bigger role, alongside the government, and she believes it’s all in companies best interest to change.

“Every employer has a responsibility to make sure that their employees are able to stay well. I mean, it costs them if they don't, it has a huge effect on the bottom line,” she said.

According to ThriveNYC, there are $14 billion in estimated annual productivity loses tied to depression and substance misuse. McCray thinks that employers have to rethink their health packages. the environments in which their employees are working, and the way this has been handled in the past.