Parity for Mental Illness, Disparity for Mental Patients

Parity for Mental Illness, Disparity for Mental Patients PDF Author: Thomas Szasz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Public opinion
Languages : en
Pages : 2

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Parity for Mental Illness, Disparity for Mental Patients

Parity for Mental Illness, Disparity for Mental Patients PDF Author: Thomas Szasz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Public opinion
Languages : en
Pages : 2

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Book Description


Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309439124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Mental Health

Mental Health PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Advocacy for Mental Health

Advocacy for Mental Health PDF Author: World Health Organization
Publisher: World Health Organization
ISBN: 9241545909
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
This volume is part of a series of publications which contain practical guidance to assist policy-makers and planners in member countries with policy development to address public mental health needs and service provision. This volume highlights the importance of advocacy in mental health policy and service development, a relatively new concept, aimed at reducing stigma and discrimination, and promoting the human rights of people with mental disorders. It considers the roles of various mental health groups in advocacy and sets out practical steps for implementation, indicating how governments can support advocacy services. The full package of eight volumes in the series is also available (ISBN 0119894173).

Mental Health

Mental Health PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mental health
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description


Losing Tim

Losing Tim PDF Author: Paul Gionfriddo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231537158
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Paul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"—an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems. In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.

The Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act PDF Author: Tamara Thompson
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737771496
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.

Achieving Parity for Mental Health Treatment

Achieving Parity for Mental Health Treatment PDF Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Insurance, Mental health
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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The Social Determinants of Mental Health

The Social Determinants of Mental Health PDF Author: Michael T. Compton
Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub
ISBN: 1585625175
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care. This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals: Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level. Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level. All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward. In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health. The editors have succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the individual/clinical/patient perspective and the population/public health/community point of view, while underscoring the need for both groups to work in a unified way to address the inequities in twenty-first century America. The Social Determinants of Mental Health gives readers the tools to understand and act to improve mental health and reduce risk for mental illnesses for individuals and communities. Students preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will also benefit from this book, as the MCAT in 2015 will test applicants' knowledge of social determinants of health. The social determinants of mental health are not distinct from the social determinants of physical health, although they deserve special emphasis given the prevalence and burden of poor mental health.

One Step Closer to Mental Health Parity

One Step Closer to Mental Health Parity PDF Author: Lorraine A. Schmall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The estimates for the incidence of some type of mental illness in the United States are remarkably high: approximately one in four. In theory, antidiscrimination protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act and health insurance should help that 25% of the population. However, the ADA has not been effective in mitigating the effects of discrimination upon the mentally ill, and health insurance coverage has been both discriminatory and deficient. Insurance plans and policies offer less coverage and more limits on the mentally ill than on any other patients, and companies almost never accommodate mental illness or tolerate the symptoms of those diseases. Congress tried to address these shortcomings through the proposed Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, an amendment to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the federal law that regulates most employee benefits, to little avail. In the meantime, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for those with mental illness to fit within the ADA's protections. However, important changes to these laws could significantly improve the lives of the mentally ill. On September 25, 2008, significant amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act were signed into law. Less than one month later, mental health parity in employer-provided health insurance became a federal mandate when the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 was quietly enacted as part of the first economic bailout. At a time when the Obama presidency is framing the social issues for the next half-decade, and when a woman accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination moments before cradling her special needs infant in her arms, mental health is ever-present in the news. That is atypical. In over a dozen years, no significant legislation nor federal agency has focused on the problems associated with mental health since David Satcher, former President Bill Clinton's Surgeon General, reported glaring disparities that violated not only civil rights, but best medical and management practices. Until now, mental illness demonstrated an almost irreconcilable conflict between economy and shame, made even worse by stereotypical thinking that stigmatizes the mentally ill or impaired, and wastes important human capital.