Mental Health
Imagine that you have a family member with a mental illness and they cannot get the care they need. Mental illness is a problem that is affecting millions of Americans every day and they need health care to manage their illness. Unfortunately, mental health is not treated the same as physical health in terms of access to care. Many Americans do not get the help they need, which can cause future problems that could have been prevented. There have been some improvements to the mental health care system but there are several problems that need to be addressed.
What is Mental Health
The first step towards fixing the mental health problem is to understand what it is and how prevalent it is. According to mentalhealth.gov, mental health involves emotional, psychological, and social aspect of a person’s health. It is a part of people’s health and is something people must manage just like their physical health. Unfortunately managing mental health may not be enough and many people can develop mental health problems. There are also many people who are born with mental illnesses. Mental health problems can be caused by biological factors (genes or brain chemistry), life experiences (trauma or abuse), or family history (mentalhealth.gov). Anyone could be affected by mental health problems at some point in their lives even for people not born with them. There are many different types of mental illness such as anxiety, behavioral, substance abuse, psychotic, mood disorders, etc.
Mental health problems are prevalent in the United States affecting millions of Americans every year. According to Insel (2015), about 43 million American adults have a mental illness that can be diagnosed and 10 million adults have a severe functional impairment. That is a big number for adults affected by mental health problems but there are also many children affected as well. There is about 1 in 7 children ages 2-8 affected by mental illnesses (CDC), 13% of children ages 8-15 with a mental illness (National Institute of Mental Health), and “20% of children ages 13-18 have and/or previously had a seriously debilitating mental disorder (Insel, 2015). Mental health problems affect all age groups so they need health care to manage those problems. Many people die due to mental illnesses with 41,149 people committing suicide in 2013 and 10.1 years in reduction of life expectancy (Insel, 2015). This shows that mental health problems are a serious issue for many Americans and the importance of people receiving the health care they need.
Mental Health Care
There have been improvements to the mental health care system in recent years and it mostly is because of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA protects individuals with pre-existing, which helps people with mental illnesses because it is a pre-existing condition. The Medicaid expansion also helped those who are poor and have a mental health problem. According to the ASPE, the Essential Health Benefits included treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. This allowed for 3.9 million people in the individual market and 1.2 million people in small group plans to receive mental health or substance use disorder coverage (ASPE). This is an improvement because many more people with mental health problems are receiving the care they need.
There may have been some improvements to the mental health care system but there are still several problems. According to Mental Health America, 19% of people with mental illnesses remained uninsured in states that did not expand Medicaid and 13% in states that did. This causes many people with mental illnesses to still not have access to the care they need. There are 56% of adults who have a mental illness not receiving care (Mental Health America). That number is not good for adults but the numbers are worse for adolescents. According to Mental Health America, 80% of youth with severe depression have no or insufficient care. All this information shows there are still problems with access to mental health care, which prevents people from getting better. This does not allow them to get better and can lead to more serious problems such as the 41,149 people who committed suicide in 2013.
Conclusion
Mental health is an important aspect to people’s overall health and it can harm a person if it is compromised. Mental health problems are a serious issue for those affected by it and it needs to be treated like any other health problem. Mental illness can become a much bigger problem if it goes untreated, which could lead to suicide. There are many people with mental health problems in the United States that do not have access to the care they need. This is a problem that needs to be addressed even though there have been improvements to mental health care.
References
https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/affordable-care-act-expands-mental-health-and-substance-use-disorder-benefits-and-federal-parity-protections-62-million-americans
https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html
Insel, T. (2015, May15). Post by Former NIMH Director Thomas Insel: Mental Health Awareness Month: By the Numbers. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2015/mental-health-awareness-month-by-the-numbers.shtml
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/state-mental-health-america
https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/what-is-mental-health/
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-disorder-among-children.shtml