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Test Your Parity IQ
The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare has created a Mental Health Parity IQ Test. Click here to take the test.
Parity Toolkit
The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare has also created a Parity Toolkit for Addiction and Mental Health Consumers, Providers and Advocates, entitled “Simplifying the Appeals Process: Strategies for Winning Disputes with Your Health Plan.” Click here to access the PDF document.
Will Health Care Reform Help Me?
Two new documents to help people with psychiatric disabilities learn more about how the health care bills passed by Congress in 2009 might affect them are available from the UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration.
The documents, a product of the UPenn Collaborative, developed by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, may be downloaded for free. "Will Health Reform Help People with Mental Illnesses?" examines the health reform bills and their impact on opportunities for community integration for people with psychiatric disabilities.
"If I Have a Psychiatric Disability, Will Health Reform Help Me?" is a complementary factsheet that further describes some changes the law could make in care and treatment for people with psychiatric disabilities. The bills covered include the House bill, Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), and the Senate bill, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (S. 3590).
Op Ed - St. Louis Post Dispatch
The Hidden Cost of Untreated Mental Illness:
A Call for Action
St. Louis, MO. April 28, 2010. As the debate over how to balance the state’s budget takes center stage, people with mental illness are becoming extremely vulnerable.
People with mental illness are a population that many of us would like to ignore. There is so much stigma about having schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and serious, persistent depression that many of us don’t seek treatment or we hide our illness from others. As a result, people with serious mental illness die an average of 25 years earlier than the general population.
One in five families is affected by mental illness. Nearly all of us work with, worship with or know someone who struggles. In Missouri, more than 70,000 people rely on the Missouri Department of Mental Health to receive treatments and services that make it possible for them to recover, integrate into society and live healthier, longer lives.
Fifty years ago, our society deinstitutionalized the mental health system. The belief was that people with mental illness could be more effectively treated in the community where they lived. The costs would be lower too. Community-based organizations were developed to provide appropriate, essential treatments and services in outpatient settings. Key among the goals was to keep people out of hospitals, prisons, nursing homes and homeless shelters.
The savings were and are dramatic. Two years ago, a group of mental health providers teamed up with the staffs of hospitals to identify people who, because of their mental illnesses, were frequent users of emergency rooms. They found that 18 “high utilizers” cost the state $1,105,191 in 2007. The community mental health organizations worked with these individuals so that their complex physical, mental and social needs could be addressed through outreach and services outside of the hospitals. Two years later, the total cost for those same people was $584,457 – a 50 percent decrease.
Research makes it clear that early intervention significantly increases a person’s ability to recover and integrate into society. But state budget restrictions are making those early interventions out of the reach for many.
If you are a young adult experiencing the early signs of schizophrenia, with few exceptions you may not be able to get services or treatment. If you have lost your job and the insurance that went with it and are experiencing major depression, you cannot get state-funded mental health services. If you’re homeless and have not sought treatment before, you won’t be eligible either.
The human toll of this situation is clearly disastrous for the individuals involved. The cost to our institutions adds up, too. People who have serious untreated mental illness do not disappear if they cannot get treatment. They end up in hospitals or prisons or lose their jobs, and then picking up the pieces becomes much more costly
Community-based mental health services can make critical, cost-effective differences.
Mel is a 32-year old man who loved to work and play hard. His life became devastated when he began experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia; he was in his early twenties. He eventually lost his job and turned to alcohol and drugs. He spent the better part of five years in jails and hospitals. He was referred to Community Alternatives and now lives in his own apartment. He no longer feels like he needs to go in and out of the hospital because caseworkers come by in the evening and watch him take his meds and remind him to use good coping skills.
We and our members recognize that the governor and legislators have difficult decisions to make. But for years the state has been significantly decreasing its support for people with mental illness. They are a vulnerable group which, because of stigma and misunderstanding, often goes unheard.
The St. Louis Chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health America of Eastern Missouri, both dedicated to helping individuals and families living with serious mental illness, has made the state budget crisis a top priority. But we can’t do it alone.
Join us and be a voice for this community. Call, write or email the governor and your legislators to prevent further cuts to mental health funding.
Jacqueline A. Lukitsch, Executive Director Mark Utterback, President & CEO
NAMI-St. Louis Mental Health America of Eastern MO
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