Sunday, February 20, 2011
Hello,
The question of the month is geared to obtain your feedback on exactly how we can fix the mental health and health systems that are broken, have been for at least a decade, and need to be fixed.
What would you do if you were in the White House? How would you propose we ...
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First of all:
I would err on the side of caution and admit someone to the hospital if I were a staff on the emergency unit instead of turning people away.
Only the problem is: the lack of beds to house the number of people who need to be hospitalized.
The U.S. House of Representatives is set to roll back funding of SAMHSA and critical mental health services. I gave you the links to take political action in my SharePost Mental Health Treatment: Lobbying for Yourself and Others.
Now more than ever we need to contact our elected officials and tell them that greatly cutting or halting mental health treatment funding is a grave mistake. They will steamroll this bill through and it will become a law unless we speak out.
I would create within the systems of care that Bredesen outlines mental health treatment centers that are in the same buiilding as primary care medical services and I would have each professional "cross-train" by talking with each other about their patient's mental health and medical treatments on a regular basis. Having the services under one roof would make it easier to access them and result [hopefully] in greater compliance on the part of the patient who needs this help.
These are just two ideas I have now about changing the system for the better.
I'll await your response and then chime in with some more ideas.
Regards,
Christina
Having mental and physical health services under one roof is a good idea. I have been in psych hospitals that were not affiliated with a regular hospital and I felt somewhat more "at risk" that something might go wrong. Maybe paranoia on my part, but I still had that impression. The "physical health system" needs to learn and understand that mental health is inextricably linked with other physical health issues.