The Importance Of Mental Health Care

When contemplating the vastness of social policies that could benefit from advocacy for policy change and a thoughtful, responsive audience, there is one topic that situates itself to the forefront of the list of policies needing major reform. This topic is that of health care resources available to those coping with mental health concerns. Though this population faces a variety of challenges such as housing/ homelessness, employment/ training opportunities and educational attainment to suggest a few, each challenge cycles into the next, effecting one another, disturbing how an individual can cope medically. Health care rights for those with mental health concerns bubbled to the public consciousness around with the acknowledgement of “serious

These community support systems shadowed what this population was experiencing in the supports that they were receiving from Social Security disability programs, as well as, Medicare and Medicaid which were health insurance programs created in 1965 (Goldman, 2015). The sum of the afore mentioned policy changes and acts, positively altered the mental health system by expanding community programs and improving income supports for individuals with disabling mental health concerns. SSI, SSDI, Medicaid, and Medicare became the financial backbone of public mental health services (Goldman,

Once more, as with the UDHR, the professionally adopted standards of the NASW Code of Ethics (2008) are not law. While the history of mental health policy has been one of small positive shifts, policy and laws still have not shifted to meet many of the medical needs of this population. One of those shifts currently includes how there is no current policy or act that designates where mental health resources should be available within a specific geographic