Letter to the Editor: America’s fragmented mental health care system
To the Editor:
The data is going in the wrong direction. While life expectancy has been on the rise since the 1960s, its sharp decline over the last several years is a sign that something is fundamentally broken in the United States.
It’s 2021, and we are losing more lives to preventable causes than ever before. Death due to drugs, alcohol and suicide are at an all-time high, and our country is hurting in ways that are multifaceted - attributable to overlapping issues and circumstances.
For some, it may be access to affordable health care. For others, it may have more to due to with social and economic factors. Loneliness, worry, isolation and issues of belonging are key drivers of despair, and we must be bold in our vision and courageous in our decision making if we are serious about making a difference in our country’s health.
For several decades, the dominant health policy landscape has focused on improving outcomes, decreasing cost and enhancing the client experience. And while these goals are important, health policy strategy has often treated mental health as an afterthought. Although there have been many well-meaning, but disconnected, attempts to integrate, we have yet to see a robust policy agenda that centers on mental health. Our country has a mental health problem, and the solutions have been as fragmented as the systems we have created to address it.
Faced with unprecedented urging, it is time to bring mental health to the top of our agenda.
People still have to wait too long to get access to mental health care, and stigma - both social and structural - remains a barrier to addressing mental health issues. While well-intentioned, clinical and programmatic fragmentation have had unintended consequences, including the creation of an entirely separate system of care that is often disconnected from the rest of health care. In addition, community mental health centers, an entirely sound idea, were never given adequate resources to develop the capacity they needed to meet the needs for mental health treatment.
Without seamlessly integrating mental health across our health systems, we are failing people, families, their communities, and ourselves, and policies should reinforce this integrated model of care. With so much focus on health care in politics, it’s a shame that so little centers on mental health. While several Presidents, and most of Congress, have brought forth policies that could be transformative for mental health, most debates leave the topic out altogether.
Isn’t it time for mental health to be on the agenda of every administrator, every elected (and running) official, and every stakeholder, including each of us as clients and family members? Isn’t it time to treat mental health for what it is, a health issue? Isn’t it time to stop talking about fixing the fragmented, broken mental health care system and do something about it?
If you would like to comment on this article, I may be reached at gottahavehope38@gmail.com.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark Jacobson
Peer Support Specialist
Winona, MN
