Lack Of Treatment For Mental Illness

The Mental Health Services Act is a monumental proposition that has helped many people for more than a decade. In California alone, close to 1.2 million adults and around 422,000 children live with a serious mental illness (State 2010). Without the proper treatment, suicide is the leading cause of death for a person battling an untreated mental illness (State 2010). With over thirteen billion dollars raised so far, MHSA has been the root of funding for mental health in California (Williams 2015). MHSA is still a work in progress. The act is nowhere near perfect, as a recent audit has shown, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

It is no secret that over the past three decades, there has been a significant deterioration in public mental health services. This can be attributed to decreased funding and falsified reports

In today’s society there is a greater awareness of mental illnesses. With this greater awareness one might assume that there would be a substantial increase in government involvement or funding in the area of mental illness treatment. Unfortunately this isn’t the case in the U.S. today. There are hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness that go untreated. These potential patients go untreated for many reasons. These reasons are discussed in the Time article “Mental Health Reform: What Would it Really Take.

It has been my goal since beginning in the field of social work to begin addressing some of the disparities surrounding mental health that exist within varying communities. It is common knowledge that communities with a high rates of poverty are not considered a priority when receiving the help that is needed when addressing the mind's health. This is evidenced by the state of the healthcare system that exists within this country. Though healthcare has seen drastic changes over the past few years under the Obama administration, there still remains a gap in care to people who need it.

The shortage of aid for treating mental health disorders is often disregarded as inconsequential because of a lack of awareness surrounding the subject. Both the general public and policy makers seem blind to the prevalence of the problem, even though mental illness affects 1 in 5 Americans and costs the country an estimated $247 billion dollars annually (Blumenthal, 2015). The Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act of 2015 was written to address mental health issues and the problems surrounding lack of awareness; it seeks to provide early intervention and treatment through symptom awareness training, removal of barriers to treatment, and expansion of knowledge on how to treat mental health illnesses. (“Alexander, Murray Introduce,” 2015).

Working for MHCD for the last 3 months has taught me so much about health-care funding for underserved populations (or lack thereof). However even if it has made me ever-more melancholy about some people's access to mental health care, it has only invigorated my passion for mental health and the benefits it brings to people's lives. It is hard to overstate the impact that having access to proper psychiatric medicine has on an individual

Mental health is defined as a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being. We have been aware of mental health since prehistoric times, but we began making advances towards helping people with their mental health in the 1840s when activist Dorothea Dox requested for better living conditions for individuals that are mentally ill. In just 40 years, Dox effectively influenced the U.S. government, and got the funding to build 32 psychiatric hospitals all over America. Since then, we have made considerable progress, there are currently 5,627 psychiatric hospitals in the U.S. Though we have come far, we are still not far enough. Approximately 60% of adults, and nearly 50% of youth with a mental illness received no mental health services in the previous year.

Seeking support systems for mental health is difficult enough due to societal stigma surrounding mental illness and without help, can lead to fatal consequences such as suicide (Crabtree & Haslam, 2010). Although they are not as immediately fatal as cancer and heart disease might be, they should receive a greater priority. For example, health programs focus on these chronic diseases and have strategies and goals for them to be reduced in the population, but for mental disorders, especially in Western contexts, there is significantly less healthcare budget and resources, but more community-based measures (Lawrence & Kisely, 2010). For the systemic issues of the mental healthcare system, it may be suggested that they attempt to lessen the discrepancy between the two by making a more integrated care system instead of a separated one. Lawrence & Kisely emphasize the fact the advantages to this system would be the reduced stigma and access for mental health serviced.

Access to mental health care is not as good as than other forms of medical services. Some Americans have reduced access to mental health care amenities because they are living in a countryside setting. Others cannot get to treatment for the reason of shortage of transportation or vast work and household tasks. In some areas, when a

Mental illnesses are becoming more and more prevalent among the population in the United States. In 2014, 1 in 5 adults were diagnosed with any mental illness (AMI) as evidence by statistics presented by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA, 2015); of those 1 in 5 adults, 18 years and older in the United States, accounts for 18.1% of the population, or 43.6 million people diagnosed with depression and/ or anxiety (Kessler RC, Chiu WT, Demler O, Walters EE, 2005). From changes in mood, to changes in thoughts and behaviors, mental illnesses are sought to be higher in adults ages 18-25 (SAMHSA, 2015).

Inadequate accessiabilty to mental health care treatment is an issue that has gone on for way to long. With mental health being a global epicdemic those who suffer should not have to do so because of lack of resources or denials of insurance claims. 1 in 4 Americans suffer from some form of mental illness in their life time which equates to almost a million people in a given year(Holmes,L,2014). That means that out of those people you have people who will possibly lost their job, became homeless, or whose health willcontinued to deteriorate all because in one way or another the resources where not available to them. Mental health affects the young and the old and more needs to be done to bring awareness to the disease as well funds allocated

The cost of outpatient treatment is expensive. Most psychiatrists’ offices and hospitals require high copayments and deductibles if the treatment is covered under the patient’s insurance plan. But according to a report done by the Center for Disease Control, people with serious mental illnesses are less likely to have health insurance, so they would be required to pay even more money out-of-pocket if they decide to receive treatment (Cohn, J. 2015). The funding required for treatment is also a big issue. In the early 20th century, insurance companies did not cover mental health care at all. Eventually, they started adding mental health coverage, and by the 1980s, managed care was introduced and was lowering costs (Cohn, J. 2015). But patients were concerned that these lower prices were compromising the quality of care.

Data collection and monitoring are important steps to identify different kinds of mental health needs and to target resources at the national, state, and local levels. “Public health surveillance involves systematic and ongoing collection of data followed by the interpretation and dissemination of the data” (Perou et al 2013) in order to facilitate public health action. Information and indicators that warrant attention and appropriate monitoring relating to the mental health issues include, among other things: the extent of the problem (the prevalence of mental disorders and identification of major risk factors and protective factors for mental health and well-being); services gap between the number of people who have a mental disorder and those who receive(or utilize) treatment and a range of appropriate services, including social services; health outcome/indicators data (including suicide, unhealthy days, premature mortality rates, levels of disability, risk factors, and social and economic outcome data (including relative levels of educational achievement,

One in four people in the world will be affected by a mental or neurological disorder during their lifetime. Approximately 450 million people suffer from mental health disorders globally. 44%-70% of the population worldwide does not receive healthcare treatment for mental disorders (WHO, 2011). The United Nation’s health agency urges governments to break away from large mental institutions and towards community health care, and integrate mental health care into primary health care and the general health care system.

The burden of mental illness in the United States (US) is among the highest of all diseases, and mental disorders are among the most common causes of disability (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). People with untreated mental health disorders are at high risk for many unhealthy and unsafe behaviors, including substance abuse, violent behavior, and suicide. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States for all age groups and the second leading cause of death among people age 25 to 34 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). As defined in Healthy People 2020 (HP2020), the goal is a 10 percent improvement in suicide rates (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Increasing mental health