Overcrowding Of Mental Health Hospitals

Overcrowding of Mental Health Hospitals: A Health Care Quality Issue The crowding in mental health hospitals comes from the use of emergency medicine as a specialty that has a federal law that allows any patient to receive treatment there (Barish, McGaudly, & Arnold, 2012, p. 304). Because of the lack of primary care physicians for a proper referral to seek mental health treatment, patients seek medical care in ERs (Barish, McGaudly, & Arnold, 2012, p. 304). Within mental health, patients with severe psychiatric disorder visit the emergency room one or multiple times throughout their diagnosis. These patients with mental health-related emergency department visits were twice as more likely to result in hospital admission to the emergency room

About 0.5 million American suffer from severe mental health illnesses do not receive the appropriate treatment through the mental health system (Cost of not caring: Nowhere to go, 2015). Often these people have been brought to jails or homeless shelters and receive uncompassionate services from facilities with inadequate services. Through the increasing rate of people experiencing mental illnesses, recent literature shows increased use of overburdened emergency rooms for mentally disturbed patients (Barish, McGauly, & Arnold, 2012, p. 307). These patients have failed to receive inpatient mental health treatment because of hospitals operating at capacity or due to the lack of space in state-run and private psychiatric hospitals. Furthermore, Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services found that 72 people suffering from a mental health crisis and qualify for temporary detention order received inadequate emergency hospitalization from non-admittance to hospitals (Psychiatric Hospitals Denying Admittance Due to Overcrowding, 2012). The 1.5% represents people who were denied admittance in comparison with the 5,000 hospitalized under temporary detention orders. Even though another 273 people received TDO, these patients had difficulty finding placement in facilities furthering in

Furthermore, these type of partnership will put pressure on health care organizations and hospitals who do not provide emergency psychiatric care to include that as part of their agency or emergency department. Social workers and health professionals work together to intervene at this level for patients. They help advocate the importance of collaborating with community organizations and the benefits associated with the relationship (Lustig, 2012, p. 146). Furthermore, they can assess the need for more emergency services through community clinics and integrated healthcare programs to alleviate a number of psychiatric patients within the emergency department. Policy advocacy strategies should influence county legislature to open create more community clinics or have access to more community clinics open on weekends in vulnerable regions of the