Mar 9, 2015

Mental Health: Change Perception–Change Reality

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Reprinted from the SAMHSA blog:

Changing the Story about Mental Health in America

blog.samhsa.gov · by SAMHSA · March 9, 2015

Today, in support of her Joining Forces initiative, the First Lady spoke at the launch of The Campaign to Change Direction, a nation-wide effort to raise awareness around mental health in America. Spearheaded by Give an Hour and co-sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the campaign is designed to change the story of mental health across the nation by urging all Americans to learn the five signs that someone might be in distress.

While there has been much media attention on mental health in the military and veteran community, it is incredibly important to understand that mental health isn’t just a military issue — it is a human issue. Mental health conditions impact our children, our grandparents, and our neighbors. Every year, roughly one in five adults — or more than 40 million Americans — experience a diagnosable mental health condition like depression or anxiety.

"I want to encourage everyone in this country to go to http://t.co/MBYHHV44EY." —The First Lady on learning the five signs of mental illness

— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) March 4, 2015

It’s up to all of us to change the conversation by encouraging everyone to reach out when a friend, co-worker, veteran, or loved one might be struggling, and to ask for help when we need it for ourselves.

As the First Lady said today at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.:

It’s time to tell everyone who’s dealing with a mental health issue that they’re not alone, and that getting support and treatment isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. That’s something that my husband believes strongly as President. Because in this country, when you’re fighting an illness — whether that’s mental or physical — you should be able to get the help you need, end of story.

Rory Brosius is the Deputy Director of Joining Forces.

Campaign to Change Direction, First Lady of the United States of America, FLOTUS, Joining Forces, Michelle Obama, The First Lady

Cheers,
  ~ Sparky

Filed Under: Mental Health · Tagged: , , , ,
Dec 20, 2014

Hpapyy Hlodiyas

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ErodedMentalHealth_THUMBIf you have followed my blog over the past few years, you know by now that I am passionate, and write rather frequently, about mental and behavioral healthcare policy. So I first wanted to share with you an informative and powerful infographic (below) from the Best Social Work Programs website.

And secondly, I wanted to take just a moment to remind you this is an especially hard time of the year for someone you very likely know – and may even know very well. The absence of friends and family lost is felt more acutely. Pressure is greater to suppress feelings of anxiety and sadness. Failures of achievement must be reconciled with another year’s passing.

Try to remember that with few exceptions the person you know who may be struggling with mental and/or behavioral health issues finds very little joy in having a negative influence on your holidays. They did not choose to be saddled with their disease any more than those with Diabetes, Heart Disease or COPD chose their lots in life.

Here’s hoping that messages like the one below will continue to build public awareness and find their way into more proactive mental/behavioral health policy in 2015.

Cheers,
  Sparky

ErodedMentalHealth

Filed Under: Editorials & Opinions, Mental & Behavioral Health · Tagged: , , , , ,
Nov 6, 2014

Mental Illness Is A Community Disease

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For those Pub patrons interested in being kept informed on happenings affecting the futureneeding-mental-health-care of mental health policy in the US. the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will be holding a public listening session next Wednesday, November 12th, to solicit input and feedback on the establishment of criteria for  the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC) Demonstration Program, as outlined in Protecting Access to Medicare Act (P.L. 113-93, Section 223).

    The demonstration program was originally introduced as the Excellence in Mental Health Act by Senators Stabenow (D-MI) and Blunt (R-MO) and U.S. Representatives Matsui (D-CA) and Lance (R-NJ) and is an effort to strengthen community mental health systems by establishing higher standards of care and better coordination and communication across individuals, organizations and agencies that provide assistance and care to individuals in their communities. 

Under provisions of the Act, which was an extender bill used to delay until March of next year pending cuts to Medicare, a maximum of eight states will be selected to participate in a two-year demonstration program whereby the federal government will pay a matching percentage to those states for providing medical assistance for mental health services equal to what Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) currently receive for primary care services. This is strictly an outpatient clinic initiative (i.e., no funding for inpatient care, boarding, residential treatment).

Example services to be provided by CCBHC’s under the demonstration program include 24-hour crisis management, screening assessments and diagnostic services, outpatient mental health and substance-abuse services, primary care screening and peer support and counseling. The HHS secretary is to determine criteria for a clinic to be certified by a state as a CCBHC no later than September of next year. Next week’s session will solicit input on criteria such as,

  • staffing requirements: e.g., qualifications, areas of experience & expertise, licensing and credentialing, recruiting;
  • availability, scope and accessibility of services: e.g., looking beyond crisis management, determining basis of financial responsibility, evidencing service and referral relationships;
  • care coordination: e.g., relationships with other providers, integration into and with community services and agencies, enabling technical requirements;
  • governance, accountability & reporting: e.g., organizational authority, measuring outcomes, evidential reporting.

    • The secretary is also directed to provide guidance for the establishment of a prospective payment system for this demonstration program, no later than Sept. 1, 2015.

    As I have shared in this space numerous times before, mental and behavioral health services are underfunded and inadequately available to meet the growing needs across the country. We are learning more every day of the evidentiary benefits – to the individual and society – of taking a holistic approach to individual health and welfare. I am hoping to learn more next week whether and how this demonstration program might lead to addressing this critical concern – and I will report back what I learn.

    Cheers,
      Sparky

Filed Under: In the News, Mental Health Policy · Tagged: , , , , , ,
Oct 6, 2014

Mental Illness Awareness Week

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The Policy Pub wishes to share with our patrons Mental Illness Awareness Week sponsored by the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration. Mental and behavioral health concerns are growing in awareness across the country. MIAW’s aim is to “help educate all Americans on the needs of individuals with mental illness—including serious mental illness—and their families.”

According to SAMHSA, of the approximately 10 million adults with a serious mental illness, less than one-half of those individuals will receive the services and care they need. Social stigmas continue to be a significant barrier in this regard. As part of its week long effort to continue bringing awareness and education combating stigmatization SAMHSA recommends:

  • supporting individuals with mental illness by helping them understand they are not alone;
  • becoming educated on ways to prevent mental illness, particularly by proactively screening and addressing potential issues during childhood;
  • building greater awareness that effective treatments of mental and behavioral health disorders are available; and
  • celebrating that very often those treatments make a tremendous difference in the quality of life of the individual: People do recover.

    • The SAMHSA website is a fantastic resource on a wide variety of knowledge and information on mental and behavioral health issues and concerns – from advocacy to education to emergency assistance. I encourage you to take a moment to become familiar with what is available there and share with others who might benefit from knowing where to turn – whether because they are seeking to help a loved one, someone they’ve never met, or themselves.

    Cheers,
      ~ Sparky

Filed Under: Mental/Behavioral Health · Tagged: , , , , ,
Aug 13, 2014

Depression, Addiction & Mental Health Policy

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Pic For BlogThe last time I remember feeling as badly about a celebrity passing has to be December 8, 1980. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when a radio disk jockey (people that used to play and broadcast what were known as records on electronic turntables) broke the news over a song that John Lennon had been shot. About two minutes later, the music was stopped – and the sad news announced that he had been shot – and killed.

Queue up round the clock Beatles music and millions of tears across the world.  The next day in the Rock n Roll capital was damp and dreary. A cold mist just seemed to hang in the air. One of those days where ironically it would feel warmer if it would have just snowed. There are a lot of days like that in early December in Cleveland, Ohio. But this one so fit the mood.

Nobody saw that one coming. Whereas we all know now what only a few knew all to well before Monday: that Robin Willams’ mental demons were probably always only a few steps behind. Shadowing him like the inescapable darkness of a night in the forest, depression is a disease that lurks, pounces, retreats and then stalks – taking in turn at random how it chooses to haunt its victims.

Addiction, on the other hand, despite the cultural shift in attitudes over the past few decades, is not a disease. Writing in the Psychology Today blog a couple of years back, Dr. Lance Dodes explains how addiction has little in common with other diseases and cannot be explained by any disease process. But as he also astutely points out, neither is it the purview of individuals lacking in discipline and morality,  just being selfish and self-centered.

But to understand addiction is to understand the mental state of an individual leading up to and perpetuating its hold on that person.  Dr. Lance writes, “addictive behavior is a readily understandable symptom, not a disease.” In Williams’ case the connection between depression and resulting behavior leading to addiction is something that should continue to build awareness and understanding.

I realize it’s a sensitive line here because the last thing we want to do is roll back the progress made fighting stigmatization and the barrier and obstacles that has created in affecting treatment access. On the other hand, from a public policy perspective it is crucial that we continue to dig deeper: to understand mental health – and mental illness – as a critically holistic element impacting all varieties of personal well being, not just as a precept to alcoholism and addiction.

Robin Williams’ wife has asked that we remember her husband by not focusing on his death, “but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions.” As the emotional pain subsides I am certain we will be able to do that. Before we get to that place, however, it is natural to question and seek answers on how this tragedy might have been avoided.

For millions of Americans suffering from, or affected by a loved one suffering from, a mental illness, alcoholism or addiction, Robin Williams’ death is a painful reminder of the fear and vulnerability they live with every day. And they are right to be questioning what might be done to help address that suffering. Yesterday, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa) noted that, “Williams’ greatest gift to us, if we choose to accept it, is a focused determination to help those with brain illness and finally take real action to stop the loss of one more precious life.”

In December of last year, in response to the 2012 elementary school shooting in Connecticut, Murphy – a clinical psychologist – introduced H.R. 3717, The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. One of the most important initiatives in the bill is to address the Institutions for Mental Disease (IMD) Exclusion, which limits Medicaid coverage for inpatient mental health and addiction treatment.

The bill is complex, comprehensive and has faced a significant amount of criticism. Good coverage of this can be found in a blog post from Gary Earles, LICSW, writing last year for the Morning Zen on the Children’s Mental Health Network. Very doubtful that even with this latest tragedy the bill will move anywhere before the next Congress is installed. But what might now happen is the debate will move from the purview of policy wonks, trade groups and special interests into the real world where those aforementioned suffering can have a voice. We can only hope.

Cheers,
  Sparky

Filed Under: Depression & Addiction, Editorials & Opinions · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Jul 16, 2014

The Lunacy of Our Mental Health Policy

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MEDICAID1-master675An institution for mental diseases (or, “IMD”) is defined as, “a hospital, nursing facility, or other institution that is primarily engaged in providing diagnosis, treatment, or care of persons with mental illness, including medical attention, nursing care, and related services” (42 U.S.C. §1396d(i)).

Last week the New York Times ran an article addressing the infamous Medicaid IMD exclusion: the culmination of state and federal policies dating back to the 19th century up to and including the Medicare Catastrophic Act of 1988, in which an IMD was infamously defined as a facility with more than 16 beds.

The apparent intent at that time was to promote small, community-based group living arrangements as an alternative to large institutions. But what has resulted is that Medicaid covers mental health treatment for a large percentage of people with Medicaid, but that coverage is excluded for inpatient treatment of adults aged 21 to 64 in any acute or long-term care institutions with 17 or more beds that are primarily engaged in providing treatment for mental illnesses. This is what is known as the Medicaid IMD exclusion.

Another indirect consequential reality of the IMD exclusion is what’s known as psychiatric boarding. The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals participating in the Medicare program to provide a medical screening examination of any person presenting to its emergency department regardless of the ability to pay.  For psychiatric emergencies, an individual expressing suicidal or homicidal thoughts or gestures, if determined to be dangerous to themselves or others, the hospital must either provide treatment until their condition is stabilized – or transfer that person to an inpatient facility where the person can be treated until the condition is stabilized.

But there’s the rub: since so many individuals with mental illness (and addiction is considered a mental illness) are Medicaid patients there are very often limited alternatives for transfer.  Thus those patients tend to stay in emergency departments longer than necessary – an expensive consequence because of the cost intensive nature of ED’s. Communities work hard to develop informal diversion relationships to try and address the issues and challenges this creates: but their time could be better spent – like on improving patient care.

Section 2707 of the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid Emergency Psychiatric Demonstration, is a three-year pilot program that permits non-government psychiatric hospitals with more than 16 beds to receive Medicaid payment for providing EMTALA-related emergency services to Medicaid recipients aged 21 to 64 who have expressed suicidal or homicidal thoughts or gestures, and who are determined to be dangerous to themselves or others.

But this only addresses specifically-defined crises and will take a long time to be tested, evaluated and debated. It does not address the epidemical crisis we face as a nation with heroin addiction. So even though 26 states have willingly or unwillingly embraced Medicaid expansion under the ACA, many of the individuals needing inpatient treatment for addiction will be unable to receive that treatment.

A recent study published by researchers at the Boston Medical Center in the JAMA Internal Medicine Journal  reaffirmed the importance of combining inpatient and outpatient treat of heroin addiction. From the NYT article: for many suffering with heroin addiction, “there is an undeniable and essential need for residential treatment,” said Allen Sandusky, the South Suburban Council’s chief executive in Chicago.

Study after study has demonstrated that substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation is less expensive than incarceration as an alternative to addressing individual addiction and alcoholism. At the same time, economies of scale driving greater efficiency and lower program costs in facilities that allocate overhead over a larger number of beds is just economically intuitive.

When all these considerations are taken together with the skyrocketing costs associated with increasing crime and the burden being placed on community first responders as a direct result of the heroin epidemic it would seem like the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth is to legislatively repeal the IMD exclusion. Thus be to the ignominious wasteland that is Washington, DC.

At a time when communities across the country are scrambling to address a heroin epidemic that is literally destroying those communities and the families living there Congress is focused on a lawsuit against the president (the House) and an irrationally urgent need to reverse the Supreme Court’s innocuous Hobby Lobby decision (Senate). Shameful, truly shameful. Even more so than usual.

Cheers,
  Sparky

Photo credit: Armando L. Sanchez for The New York Times

Filed Under: Editorials & Opinions · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Jun 28, 2014

Changing Our Perspective on Mental Health

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On Thursday I shared the post, Don’t Make Mental Health Policy About Stigma. Jessica Dawson, the brave woman who was one of several individuals featured in the USA Today article I reacted to in my post commented that she was, “discontented [her] photo is being used on [my blog] to discredit the impact which stigma has on government policies.”

I took that personally pretty hard as I had a sense I was betraying someone because of my ignorance on a subject that I am very passionate about and for which I have advocated here in the Pub. But I have to stick with what I wrote: not because I am sure I’m right – but because it’s what I wrote. In my response to Ms. Dawson I noted that I didn’t believe we had different goals but rather different beliefs in how to most effectively achieve those goals.

And then this morning I came across an article from earlier this week by Judith Solomon for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that is thematically consistent for what I was advocating: the pragmatic role that research and evidentiary support should play in advancing policies supportive of mental and behavioral health access and affordability – relative to (i.e., not exclusive of) the role fighting stigmatism can play in our current economic and political environment.

The article, The Truth About Health Reform’s Medicaid Expansion and People Leaving Jail, presents evidence that facilitating Medicaid enrollment in states participating in expansion under the Affordable Care Act, “can enable more of them to avoid returning to jail or prison by connecting them to needed mental health, substance abuse, or other treatment.  This is why many state corrections agencies and county governments are collaborating with state Medicaid agencies on projects designed to enroll low-income people being released from jails or prisons.”

On average, approximately 75% of the US prison population consists of nonviolent offenders, many of whom have a myriad of mental and behavioral health challenges and/or are fighting addiction. According to Solomon, “alcohol plays a role in over half of all incarcerations, and illicit drugs are involved in over 75 percent of jail stays.” But only 11 percent of inmates receive any type of treatment, while comorbid conditions are prevalent.

I haven’t taken the time to explore the cites and research that Solomon provides, so I want to be careful not to be advocating for something that obviously needs to be carefully considered, debated and vetted. My point is simply this: we should be investing more to determine – and evidence – whether and how this type of policy intervention can help achieve a stronger, more accessible, more effective mental health system.

We need to change our perspective on mental health. Fighting stigmatism – yes, important. I get that. But I believe we should be investing more heavily to educate the country about how intervention and treatment works – and how it can lower costs to families, communities and the country in the long run. There is a much better chance of redirecting funding from other sources than securing funding for new initiatives. That’s the political reality – like it or not.

Cheers,
  Sparky

Filed Under: Editorials & Opinions, Medicaid · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
Jun 26, 2014

Don’t Make Mental Health Policy About the Stigma

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Cost of not caring: Stigma set in stone by Liz Szabo, USA TODAY.

This second article of a USA Today series, Mentally Ill Suffer in Sick System, this morning began exploring, "the human and financial costs that the country pays for not caring more about the nearly 10 million Americans with serious mental illness." But the article didn’t address any of the aggregate human costs nor any of the financial costs the country pays due to serious mental illness. Maybe future articles will, and that’s what I would like to encourage with this post.

Now, admittedly, USA Today isn’t in the top 10% of resources I normally rely upon for keen insights and emerging trends and drivers in healthcare, but nonetheless I think they deserve enormous credit for using their national reach to bring greater awareness to a critically important issue.

From a public policy perspective, however, this first contribution is wide of the mark in advancing the type of dialogue that could actually lead to meaningful public policy initiatives impacting mental and behavioral health services. So though I very much doubt their editors will ever see this post, I would like to provide some input that might be useful in developing content for future articles in the series.

Today’s article focused on two themes: the latent impact that stereotypes associated with mental illness still have, often creating self-absorbed obstacles to seeking and receiving much-needed diagnosis, treatment, support services and ongoing care; and the dramatic lack of sufficient resources committed to helping those who are brave enough to seek assistance and support.

Of course, stigmatism is still very real, yet very difficult to understand: it isn’t just a case of stereotyping and ignorance. Mental illness is difficult for many of us to comprehend because the mechanism responsible for its existence is the same mechanism we use to understand it. Most of us can use our brains to understand heart disease, diabetes and lung cancer. But somehow using our brains to explore and reason through a disease process that in others (or, to be sure, often ourselves) impacts our thinking can be uncomfortably counterintuitive.

The inherent stigmatization isn’t just in the fact that someone with mental illness is, "different." It’s the added frustration of having difficulty understanding why they are different. An individual receiving chemotherapy for cancer may look different than their appearance prior to disease. Someone who has had an amputation resulting from diabetes has a noticeable difference in appearance. But mental illness very often doesn’t carry with it the externalities of these changes in appearance (the manifestation of behavioral health consequences resulting from mental illness may lead to dramatic changes in appearance, but those are usually self-chosen much the same way one would choose a different hair color or style).

So while it may be said that ignorance is a lack of understanding acted upon, I agree we should continue to concentrate efforts on building understanding and awareness through continued education, rather than trying to coach away ignorance through reprimand and humiliation that too often characterize so many public awareness campaigns.

Such efforts have had beneficial impact: as a society we are generally much more accepting today than 20 years ago that mental illness is not a self-chosen condition bearing the shame of poor choices and moral subservience. And they have concurrently raised awareness about the urgent need to develop more effective public policy to address accelerating mental and behavioral health needs.

And so, as related in the USA Today article, the most emotionally convenient and expedient approach to lobbying for additional funding in support of MH/BHS is to continue making the case that mental illness should be viewed just as any other disease of a human organ – since the brain is, after all, a human organ. This reflects the inherent strategy that fighting the stigmatization of mental illness will hold sway over those able to increase funding of MH/BHS policy initiatives. But I don’t think it will because every dollar allocated to healthcare is becoming increasingly precious.

From a policy perspective, I believe it is both folly and a wasted effort to spend valuable resources on lobbying for more funding without being able to provide realistic and achievable budgetary offsets. To do this, advocates of MH/BHS programs need to focus their time and energy on generating evidentiary support for where and how funding of existing programs that address the consequences of mental illness can be more effectively invested in programs that diagnose and treat mental illness – i.e., before that illness results in consequences which place resource strain on other areas of social health and welfare (e.g., utilization of hospital emergency departments and the criminal justice system, the economic impact on families and the cascading effect that has on the rest of society). This is, I assume, what USA Today claims the series intends to do via relaying the “human and financial costs” of mental illness. We will see.

In healthcare, we are now living in an era where the expectation that research and evidence support clinical decision-making has steadfastly made its way into organizational administrative and financial decision-making. Quite obviously, we cannot hope that will ever be the same in Congress, but through the Affordable Care Act and various programmatic changes impacting state Medicaid budgets legislators are by default forcing healthcare providers to much more carefully analyze alternative investments – and to use return on investment as a tool for that analysis. Mental health advocates need to recognize this reality if they want their efforts to ultimately result in constructive public policy consistent with their overarching goals and objectives.

I really hope this understanding is reflected in future articles in the USA Today series. I understand anecdotal human-interest stories that tug at the heartstrings help sell newspapers, but they contribute very little to the knowledgebase of understanding needed to assess where and how limited resources can best be reallocated to address this tremendously difficult challenge that we all face as a society.

Cheers,
  Sparky

Picture Credit ~ Jim C. Jeong for USA Today

Filed Under: Editorials & Opinions, Mental/Behavioral Health · Tagged: , , , , ,
May 29, 2014

The Human Spirit as an Organ

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Brain-Lightbulb1-214x300May 23rd, 2014 – Santa Barbara, California: another day, another shooting rampage, a few more souls lost to mental illness. More calls for gun control. More calls for funding of public health programs. More wringing of our hands and gnashing of our teeth where as a society we wrestle with what we can do to prevent disturbed individuals like Elliot Rodger from senselessly taking the lives of others.

I’d like to take a pragmatic approach to what we might do, starting with gun control.

As we saw recently, opponents of gun control are very effective politically at making impassioned arguments that owning a gun is the manifestation of a God-given right to defend personal self and property against threats from others – and most particularly in the minds of some political activists  (i.e., the Tea Party), the government. And they have huge lobbying strength.

Now I feel I have to share, that even for those most zealous gun enthusiasts with huge caches of automatic weapons I truly don’t understand how they would expect to defend their neighborhood against an AH-64 Apache helicopter should there ever be a military-supported government coup. Can’t you see it? A long row of sixty-something Harley riders with ammo strips strapped over their shoulders, long grey hair flowing from under their skull n bones bandanas. Waving their AK-40’s wildly as they fall like dominoes. Sort of like us fifty-something’s having to get under our desks in grade school during the 60s to rehearse protecting ourselves against a nuclear attack. But I digress.

Humor aside,  I think it’s important in this discussion to understand that gun ownership is a culturally ingrained part of wide swaths of our society. Unless that changes gun control legislation and regulations will have about as much success in the 21st century that Prohibition had against controlling alcohol production and consumption in the early 20th century. And perhaps there is a measure of truth in recognizing that in both instances the policy focus is misplaced by not recognizing the ultimate responsibility of acts committed under the influence or with a weapon (or both) lies with the individual, not the bottle or the gun.

So ruling out much hope for gun control as a viable approach to prevent these types of tragedies we next turn to doubling down on promoting policies that will expand access to mental health services.  But what if rather than spending more money to treat mental illness and its symptoms as distinct and separate from physiological well being we instead doubled down on efforts to understand how critically important it is to treat mind and body together.

I realize there are earnest efforts all across the country to integrate physical and mental health and move toward holistic well being. But from what I have seen those efforts are mostly incremental in nature and not going to create the transformational shift in health practitioners’ approach that can ultimately have the type of impact on mental illness we seek.

I think what is required is a paradigm shift in thinking about where and how mental health integrates with the overall health and wellness of the individual. We need to begin recognizing that mental well-being is a spiritual reality that, while ultimately the manifestation of physiological attributes, exists independent of those attributes.

And in this way it is just as much a vital organ as is the heart, the brain and so on. And that leads me to believe we should be thinking of human mentality as an organ. Just as our physical organs are necessary to provide human cells with basic needs to sustain life, we are learning more every day how important our human mentality is to cellular health.

I believe if we can broadly achieve this vantage it would change the way we approach research, the way health practitioners integrate awareness of mental health into diagnoses and treatments, the way we approach and treat symptoms of mental illness – and it would change the way we view mental health policy.

Your thoughts?

Cheers,
  Sparky

Filed Under: Editorials & Opinions, Mental Health · Tagged: , , , ,
May 14, 2014

Mental Health in Crisis

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The cost of not caring: Nowhere to go ~ The financial and human toll for neglecting the mentally ill is the first in a new series of articles being produced by USA Today tackling this hugely critical issue (by Liz Szabo). Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa. (a child psychologist) declares that, "we have replaced the hospital bed with the jail cell, the homeless shelter and the coffin. How is that compassionate?"

Mental health services and programming has taken it on the financial chin as an unfortunate lesser of evils political choice among state programs that have traditionally provided funding. According to Robert Glover, executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, $5 billion was cut from 2009 to 2012, while 4,500 public psychiatric hospital beds were eliminated (a 10% reduction).

Mental illness is still not broadly well understood in a way that even starts to approximate its impact on society. The USA Today article estimates that approximately 10 million Americans with serious mental illness are not receiving care. While at the same time, individuals with serious mental illness have a probability of dying 23 years younger compared to others.

The costs to society are dramatic: in excess of $440 billion a year. And only about one-third of that total goes to medical care. Much of it reflects disability payments and lost productivity. And that amount does not include lost earnings or tax revenue spent on prisons.

The timing is not good. State budgets are already being stretched and the national focus is on how to take costs out of the system – not add more. Medicaid expansion is likely to help identify greater need for mental health services without any commensurate plan in place to address those needs.

Yet we simply cannot afford to continue down the care delivery path we have forged. Mental illness is often a root cause for various physical illness and chronic conditions. Tragic events like Sandy Hook Elementary, Virginia Tech and Fort Hood remind us of the potential incident costs of untreated mental illness – but a fitting analogy of those events to the broader problem might be comparing the tragedy of an airplane crash to the number of traffic fatalities across the country each year.

Recently in true Washington partisan fashion Republicans and Democrats illustrated their shared compassion for those suffering from mental illness by drafting legislation designed to promote political distinctiveness rather than policy progress (though it should be noted that in this instance the Democratic initiative has to be viewed as politically reactive). Here’s hoping maybe someday that will change and this country can start having the very serious and much needed conversation on how to address this terrible crisis.

Cheers,
  Sparky

Filed Under: In the News, Mental Health · Tagged: , , ,
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