Reply separately to two of your classmates posts (See attached classmates posts, post#1 and post#2). INSTRUCTIONS: As an educational opportunity, respond to two of your peers, and briefly summarize a
POST # 2 COURTNEY
The purpose of this discussion post is to explore the issues that America phases regarding health promotion and diseases prevention for mental health. Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in our country and over 70% of those who need services worldwide are not receiving any (Wainberg et al., 2017). With today’s knowledge and technology, it is inexcusable to have such a high occurring health concern be so neglected. There are various issues creating this lack of needed health care services to this population. Three issues that are responsible for the lack of mental health care in our country are the stigmas attached to mental disorders/illnesses, lack of resources, and lack of research.
Many individuals who suffer from mental health concerns do not receive the care they need due to stigmatizing. Those with mental illnesses often state they are made to feel rejected or degraded by healthcare workers (Knaak et al., 2017). Often these patients are not given autonomy due to the assumption that their mental health will affect their decision making. They can also be left feeling hopeless as their condition is often a lifelong process without a complete cure. This vulnerable population are also reported to have high rates of nurse burn-out in facilities (Knaak et al., 2017). This contributes to the patient’s behaviors being treated before the patient themselves. Those with personality disorders that consequently create disturbances and difficulty to work with are often ignored more than others as well. Stigma among health care sectors effects the level of funding, quality, and interactions for these patients. Not only does this create a lack of care but it also impacts these individual’s motivation to seek medical help.
As mentioned, stigma for this health concern leads to a lack of resources. Lack of resources include health insurance coverage, wait times, availability, and education. The high costs of insurance and the high costs of specialty services (which includes mental health services) is a huge barrier for this population. It was reported that over 40% of American’s with mental illnesses view limited insurance coverage as the lead cause for lack of mental health care services (Wood et al., 2018). Mental health services can be a matter of life or death and as mentioned are often stigmatized and not placed as a priority in the health care system. Long wait times for services and no local services is another barrier to mental health care resources. The other issue with resources is lack of education for patients on services. The younger populations with mental health concerns are especially unaware of resources available to them and some are too worried about being judged to ask.
These two barriers to mental health treatment (stigmatizing and lack of resources) consequently leads to lack of research for mental health care. Research on depression and on the brain’s chemistry in general need to be held to a higher priority in our healthcare system. Most people with a mental health concern are prescribed antidepressants as if their conditions are all equal, which they are not. Some people thrive with the use of antidepressants while others feel robotic. The judgement that mental illness is not as detrimental or curable as a physical illness creates less initiative to conduct research to better our care regimens for this population. If ethics cannot create a more just system finances should be taken into consideration to increase research motivation. Productivity due to mental illness is creating a cost of approximately $30 billion dollars in America (Lake, 2017). A greater emphasis on how we can prevent, treat, and screen for mental health illness should be implemented within our healthcare system.
In the small community hospital, I work in currently the mental illness population is large. We typically do not see patients for depression or suicide ideation but instead encounter this population because of other non-mental illness health concerns. As we have learned through this course these people can easily slip through the cracks and be discharged unsafely back to cope with their illnesses mentally on their own. Better screening and closer follow-ups are needed to provide adequate care to this population.
References
Knaak, S., Mantler, E., & Szeto, A. (2017). Mental illness-related stigma in healthcare. Healthcare Management Forum, 30(2), 111-116. doi:10.1177/0840470416679413
Lake, J. (2017). Urgent Need for Improved Mental Health Care and a More Collaborative Model of Care. The Permanente Journal. doi:10.7812/tpp/17-024
Wainberg, M. L., Scorza, P., Shultz, J. M., Helpman, L., Mootz, J. J., Johnson, K. A., . . . Arbuckle, M. R. (2017). Challenges and Opportunities in Global Mental Health: A Research-to-Practice Perspective. Current Psychiatry Reports, 19(5). doi:10.1007/s11920-017-0780-z
Wood, P., Burwell, J., & Rawlett, K. (2018). New Study Reveals Lack of Access as Root Cause for Mental Health Crisis in America. Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://www.thenationalcouncil.org/press-releases/new-study-reveals-lack-of-access-as-root-cause-for-mental-health-crisis-in-america/
