Lesson 5: The Mental Health Care System

Attention

Does anyone really care?

When others are suffering, does anyone care?

In contemplating whether private individulas will join the FAHCA insurance pool, are they doing so beacuse they CARE about their health, both physical and mentall, OR, will they join to AVOID government imposed penalties for non-membership? Is the care here about health promotion, or punishment avoidance.

Psychologists strategize behavioral motivation by charting-out approach-approach, approach-avoidance, avoidance-aproach, and avoidance-avoidance situational dynamics.

We are going to look at the mental health care system in this Lesson. Your textbook's publication date is 2012. This means that at best, the most research reference material upon which it was edited would be 2011. By current standards, this is dated. In particular because of the changing face of health care insurance coverage, the field itself is IN MOTION. Any time when studying something that is in motion, unique challenges are created, and thinking WAY OUTSIDE the box may be required!

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

• Describe the de facto mental health service system and the four major components.
• Contrast the responsibilties of the federal state, and local mental health systems.
• Define the types of mental health services that are available in the United States.

Teaching

Reading

• Click HERE to review the health care insureance situation in Maine under the Affordable Care Act.
• Click HERE to "shop" for health insurance. Go through the intial steps of researching plans until you get to the list of different plans and prices you can access.
• Research the details in different plans to see how they compare in terms of mental health services.

Lecture

The most important thing you have is your health. If the statistic is correct, the illness that results in your death, notwithstanding sudden accident or catastrophic organ failure, will result in your spending more time and finances are trying to slow or stop pathology.

It is estimated that for the case of schizophrenia, 1 in 10 patients will do something that is life threating, and at least 1 to 2 of that 10 percent will die from behavior. Years ago, driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), returning home from having gone out to enjoy bruch with my wife, I missed hitting someone standing in the roadway. There is no traffic station as such on the BQE. However, this particular person has been arrested many times for doing just that. He was DIRECTING traffic. On a blind curve, you would not see him standing in the middle of te road. Hitting him would be a disaster for him, myself, and my wife. In such an accident, you do not run someone over. You run UNDER them. They go into hte air, and can land on your car. This is why deer, and moose accidents at least in Maine are very serious affairs. Animal can actually go through your windshield.

Why was this man still doing "police-duties?" Every time he was arrested, he would have gone to Belllevue Medical Center,

Manhattan, for psychiatric evaluation. At that point, either having past his intoxication, or, demented state of mind, he'd be released to his own recognizance. Who CARES? That is the point. If such an individual was homeless, and without financial resources, let alone health care coverage, what do you think? This issue was broached in last Lesson, number 4.

We are still living with a "broken-system." A forprofit health care delivery system leaves out many, many, many who desperately need help. Either primary screening, follow-up for special services, maintainance of therapeutic gain, and prevention of relapse. IT IS NOT HAPPENING.

Assessment

Lesson 5 Quiz

1. In your additional reading for preparation of Lesson 5, describe what you found out about mental health care coverage from looking at ""marketplace" websites. Include deductibles. This is where the system may still fail miserably. Out-of-pocket can be so high, as to render health insurance essentially unuseable.
2. Many persons with mental illness fall into the criminal justice system. Discuss the relationship of mental illness and the criminal justice system. There are people in prison who are seriously menatlly ill. There are people in psychiatric care who are seriouly criminal. The overlap may be impossible to avoid. But the consequences are real: neither the individual or society is getting what they need here.

Lesson 5 Assignment

For this assignment you are going to do some individual research on the history of mental health treatment. You will use a timeline creation app to create your own visual timeline of events. This information should be pretty detailed. It is also interesting to include other events in your timeline (historical events such as wars and Presidents). You will create your timeline and email a PDF of it to your instructor.

Lesson 5 Discussion

Imagine you are a police officer. Imagine further that you have a drug or alcohol problem. The drug may be legal prescriptive, but you have become addicted. While you can fill prescriptions, your ability to function as required by departmental standards is impaired. What do you do? Most police departments have in-house treatment resources. However, seeking such service, identifies a problem that notates in your personnel file. When time comes to take a promotional exam, you pass. There is a vacancy, but, you are passed over for promotion. Discuss this "catch-22" situation. To tell and ask, perchance to get help, or, keep silent and misjudge fatally an on-the-job situation.

For many, many years. I taught police officers coursework in behavioral sciences. The really interesting part of this was the discussions we would have in confidence about the demons some were struggling with. The water was very deep! For both of us.