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Continuing budget cuts on mental health care create negative and detrimental impacts on society due to increased improper care for mentally ill, public violence, and overcrowding in jails and emergency rooms. Origins, of mental health as people know it today, began in 1908. The movement initiated was known as “mental hygiene”, which was defined as referring to all things preserving mental health, including maintaining harmonious relation with others, and to participate in constructive changes in one’s social and physical environment (Bertolote 1). As a result of the current spending cuts approaching mental health care, proper treatment has declined drastically. The expanse of improper care to mentally ill peoples has elevated harmful threats of heightened public violence to society. Funding for mental health care comes from various sources. States typically derive the larger amount of their funds from Medicaid and state general funds that are administered by state mental health authorities. In 2007, 46% of funding was through Medicaid, and 40% of funding was through state general funds (Honberg et al. 2). Overall, states consistently assemble their budget from state general funds, federal Medicaid, federal block grants, and private grants (Honberg et al. 3). States obtain many services that fall under mental health care, and that treat the mentally ill population. These range from acute and long-term hospital treatment, to supportive housing. Other effective services utilized include crisis intervention teams, case management, Assertive Community Treatment programs, clinic services, and access to psychiatric medications (Honberg at al. 6). These services support the growing population of people living in the... ... middle of paper ... ...Concept of Mental Health." World Psychiatry (2008): 113-16. Www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. PMC. Web. 15 Dec. 2013. Cooper, Donna. "Cuts to Mental Health Services Could Lead to More Spree Killings." American Progress. Center for American Progress, 31 July 2012. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. Fisher, Nicole. "Mental Health Loses Funding As Government Continues Shutdown." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. Honberg, Ron, Sita Diehl, Darcy Grutatardo, and Mike Fitzpatrick. State Mental Health Cuts: A National Crisis. Rep. National Alliance on Mental Illness, 9 Mar. 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. Jojic, Dr. Mirjana. "Will Budget Cuts Threaten Mental Health in Your State?" ABC News. ABC News Network, 10 Nov. 2011. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. Lippman, Daniel. "State Mental Health Cuts Hit Low-Income Patients Hard." Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 19 Sept. 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
Editorial: Washington must treat the mentally ill. (2013, October, 7). The Seattle Times. Retrieved from http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/2021988414_mentalhealtheditxml.html
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
Mental healthcare has a long and murky past in the United States. In the early 1900s, patients could live in institutions for many years. The treatments and conditions were, at times, inhumane. Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s created programs to protect this vulnerable population from abuse and discrimination. In the last 20 years, mental health advocacy groups and legislators have made gains in bringing attention to the disparity between physical and mental health programs. However, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses continues to be less than optimal. Mental health disparities continue to exist in all areas of the world.
"Reform Is Needed With The Mental Health Care System In America." Political News. N.p., 7 Sept. 2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Mental Health Funding Mental health is a subject a lot of people prefer not to talk about, which is a main reason that it is so underfunded. The severe underfunding affects not only the people suffering from mental illness, but also the government, the economy, and society as a whole. It is in the government's best interest to put more funding into mental health due to the health consequences on patients, including weight issues, drastic effects on bodily functions, and difficulties in pregnancy. As well as this
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
If the United States had unlimited funds, the appropriate response to such a high number of mentally ill Americans should naturally be to provide universal coverage that doesn’t discriminate between healthcare and mental healthcare. The United States doesn’t have unlimited funds to provide universal healthcare at this point, but the country does have the ability to stop coverage discrimination. A quarter of the 15.7 million Americans who received mental health care listed themselves as the main payer for the services, according to one survey that looked at those services from 2005 to 2009. 3 Separate research from the same agency found 45 percent of those not receiving mental health care listing cost as a barrier.3 President Obama and the advisors who helped construct The Affordable Care Act recognized the problem that confronts the mentally ill. Mental healthcare had to be more affordable and different measures had to be taken to help patients recover. Although The Affordable Care Act doesn’t provide mentally ill patients will universal coverage, the act has made substantial changes to the options available to them.
Public opinion polls support expanding such treatment to reduce violence. It is tempting to capitalize on this sentiment to call for increased funding, but there are ample Reasons to advocate for better mental health services. State funding cuts are limiting access to needed public services, and criminalization of people with mental illness is a worsening public health crisis. Persons with serious mental illness are more likely to be placed in jails and prisons than hospitals.” (.424)
Those with mental illness would live in the community with an array of services and be able to be free from the constraints of confinement. In the early 1960’s the United States began an initiative to reduce and close publicly-operated mental hospitals. This became known as deinstitutionalization. The goal of deinstitutionalization was to allow people suffering from mental illness to live more independently in the community with treatments provided through community health programs. Unfortunately, the federal government did not provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to meet the growing demand. States reduced their budgets for mental hospitals but failed to increase funding for on-going community-based mental health programs. As a result of deinstitutionalization hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released into the community without the proper resources they needed for their treatment. (Harcourt,
NASMHPD. (2014, Accessed April 27). Retrieved from NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM DIRECTORS: http://www.nasmhpd.org/About/AOMultiStateDisaster.aspx
The American Health Care Act doesn't want to expand anymore money towards mental health. Mental health treatment services need to be maintained but also expaned in order to keep the country's mental health needs. Melissa Warnke explains, "The House and Senate verisons of Trumpcare would both phase out funding for that expansion and cut Medicaid spending by almost a trillion dollars over a decade.
Mental disorders are rapidly becoming more common with each new generation born in the world. Currently, nearly one in two people suffer from some form of depression, anxiety, or other mental health problem at some point in their lives (Editor). With so many people suffering from their mental illnesses, steps have been taken in order to get help needed for these people but progress has been slow. In the medical world, hospitals are treating those with physical problems with more care than those with mental problems. Prescription drugs can only do so much helping the mentally ill go through their daily lives and more should be done to help those who need more than medicine to cope with their illness. Mental health should be considered just as important as physical health because of how advanced physical healing is, how the public reacts to those with mental illness, and due to the consequences that could happen if the illness is not correctly helped.
It is deeply alarming that ignoring mental health is systematically ignored as an important part of health promotion. This is shocking because, in theory, mental health is recognized as an important component of health, the close link between physical and mental health is recognized, and it is generally known that physical and mental health share many of the same social, environmental and economic components. We know that facilities dedicated to those with mental health problems are more vulnerable to the resources of physical diseases in many parts of the world, and it is essential that mental health promotion should not be equally affected