Attitudes on Mental Health.
Significant progress must still be made, if professional mental health screeningand treatment are to become as accessible and commonplace for the average American as a routine doctor’s visit.
The exciting part is that these initiatives are, at their core, public health projects. Public health professionals equipped with these skills going to be essential to carry out the vital work necessary to catalyze ashift in the public’s mental health. Whenever surveying and researching treatment effectiveness, improving mental health provider training, planning and developing programs to address social determinants of health in innovative ways, and more, work must be done in combatting stigma. Consequently, the bottom line is clear.
It’s imperativeto keep the conversation going about this important topic, as Mental Health Month draws to a close.
Alcohol misuse alone is estimated to cost New York City nearly billion in losses. With all that said. While dropping out of school or losing one’s housing, it can cost a city New size York billions of dollars, according to an article in The Guardian, when mental health challenges lead to job loss. In response, New city York has taken a stand, developing a comprehensive mental health roadmapto tackle the big poser with a multipronged approach that includes increased data gathering, addiction treatment, partnerships with homeless youth shelters and more. It is also importantfor you the public health professional to understand theimportant troublesome statistics alluding to mental social impact illness, the real poser also costs governments billions of dollars each year, making its economic effects equally dangerous to ignore. Beyond our borders mental health also presents a significant societal cost.
Despite progress in urban areas such as New York City and clear data highlighting mental health as a major public health issue, quite a few state mental health agencies continue to cope with stagnant or reduced government funding.
Historically, superstition and religion exerted influenceon how mental illness was addressed, often punishing or isolating the mentally ill from quite a bit of society.
Then again, with origins that can be traced back centuries, the disconnect between mental overall problem illness and public support to tackle the problem is complex. With all that said. Lingering misinformation and stigma perpetuate lower rates of treatment and incomplete data on mental prevalence illness. Loads of information can be found by going on the web. Huffington Post article discussing public attitudes on mental health cited a telling statistic. More than half the country believed that depression was a sign of personal or emotional weakness, while only 38 percent described it as a health problem, as recently as 1996.
Mental health is still relegated to a lower rung within our nation’s healthcare system, although the public’s attitude ward mental health has evolved during the years.
While posing a significant obstacle to those who cannot afford treatments out of pocket, in, health insurers continue to place strict limits on the type and frequency of mental health services they will cover. Although national improvements in mental health coverage such as preventative depression screenings for adults and behavioral health screenings for children were instituted with the Affordable advent Care Act, there remains a lack of coverageparity between mental and physical health services.
