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Promoting Mental Health … and Mental Health Week
October 2nd-8th was Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) and an opportunity to learn more about mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Advocates across the country sponsored a variety of events to promote community outreach and public education concerning mental illnesses. The aim of the week was to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and dispel some of the fears we have about people with mental illness.
Congress established the first MIAW in 1990 in recognition of the efforts of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to raise awareness about mental illnesses.
Source: School of Social Work
Assessment
In 2008, Congress passed the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act taking a great step forward in the decade-plus fight to end insurance discrimination against those seeking treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. This law requires health insurance to cover both mental and physical health equally. Under this law, insurance companies can no longer arbitrarily limit the number of hospital days or outpatient treatment sessions, or assign higher co-payments or deductibles for those in need of psychological services.
The 2008 act closes several of the loopholes left by the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act and extends equal coverage to all aspects of health insurance plans, including day and visit limits, dollar limits, coinsurance, co-payments, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums. It preserves existing state parity and consumer protection laws while extending protection of mental health services to 82 million Americans not protected by state laws. The bill also ensures mental health coverage for both in network and out-of-network services.
Research shows that physical health is directly connected to mental health and millions of Americans know that suffering from a mental health disorder can be as frightening and debilitating as any major physical health disorder. Passage of this law will lead the health care system in the United States to start treating the whole person, both mind and body.
-American Psychological Association
Conclusion
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Filed under: Alerts Sign-Up, Ethics, Health Insurance | Tagged: bipolar disorder, depression, Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, Mental Illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, National Alliance on Mental Illness, Paul Wellstone, Pete Domenici, schizophrenia. |
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Using Psychiatry as a Tool for Social Justice?
Mental healthcare, psychology and psychiatry are a hot social, economic and political topic today. Many doctors and laymen love to criticize the over prescription of psycho-pharmaceuticals and the medicalization of any slight deviation from the normal by those beholden to the drug companies.
So, it is refreshing to read medical blogger Dr. Steven Balt MD who writes on this topic in Thought Broadcast. Steve is a graduate of Stanford University, Weill Medical College of Cornell University (MD), and Rockefeller University (MS, molecular neuroscience). He received residency training in adult psychiatry at Stanford Medical Center and is experienced in psychopharmacology, cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and community psychiatry. His special interest in addiction psychiatry and process addictions, particularly eating disorders [wowsa!].
So, allow me to suggest a read of Dr. Balt’s My Philosophy page on mental health along with a post I’d recommend: How to Retire at Age 27. It’s on the psychiatric qualification for disability; a topic not unknown to Financial Advisors, CPAs, health economists and all ME-P readers and subscribers.
His point is that labeling (and medicating) someone as disabled does nothing to solve underlying social problems. He concludes:
Psychiatry should not be a tool for social justice. … Using psychiatric labels to help patients obtain taxpayers’ money, unless absolutely necessary and legitimate, is wasteful and dishonest. More importantly, it harms the very souls we have pledged an oath to protect.
Be sure to click on his blog and tell us what you think; especially all you mental health types?
Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA
[Editor-in-Chief]
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Florida Sanctions Top Medicaid Prescribers
At Dr. Huberto Merayo’s bustling psychiatry practice in Coral Gables, Fla., hundreds of poor patients on Medicaid walked away each year with prescriptions for powerful antipsychotic drugs.
Merayo’s prescriptions for the drugs totaled nearly $2 million in 2009 alone, state records show. The 59-year-old psychiatrist is also in demand by the makers of these drugs.
For example, he’s earned more than $111,000 since 2009 delivering promotional talks for AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer, according to ProPublica’s database of drug-company payments to doctors.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2011/11/18/florida-sanctions-top-medicaid-prescribers-after-a-shove/
Dr. Marcinko, I am not a mental health professional, but this was a compelling read that illustrates the points above.
Gloria
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V.A. Plans To Hire 1,400 Mental Health Providers
The Department of Veterans Affairs will soon announce that it plans to hire about 1,600 additional psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other mental health clinicians in an effort to reduce long wait times for services at many veterans medical centers.
Teresa
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Families brace for ACA mental health cuts
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/29/12487332-families-brace-for-mental-health-cuts-will-other-states-follow-wisconsin
Will other states follow Wisconsin?
Dr. Kilbourne
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More IT Promotion Needed to Spur Wider EHR Adoption: Senators
Wider adoption of electronic health records will require both more legislation and efforts to promote EHRs to providers, members of Congress said Thursday. After addressing members of health IT organizations gathered in Washington for a National Health IT Week event, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Modern Healthcare that he plans to introduce legislation to address conflicts between varying state privacy laws and federal efforts to spur health information exchange. Some health IT experts have said that strong state laws have hindered that exchange.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said eligibility for the federally-supported electronic health-record system incentive payment program needs to be expanded to additional categories of providers, including mental health providers and nursing homes. Members of Congress also urged health IT organizations to reach out to more physicians to spur their health IT adoption by educating them about the benefits that the technology can bring to their practices and patients.
Source: Rich Daly, Modern Healthcare [9/13/12]
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