Mental Health- It's Okay to not be Okay

[easye]

Let's have a thread about Mental Health in the news.  

Here is a story to get us started.  

A mom owed nearly $102,000 for her son's stay in a state mental health hospital

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/19/1188421336/102-000-stay-in-a-state-mental-health-hospital-nc

Bridget Narsh's son, Mason, needed urgent help in January 2020, so she was offered the chance to send him to Central Regional Hospital, a state-run mental health facility in Butner, North Carolina.



The teen, who deals with autism and post-traumatic stress and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders, had started destroying furniture and running away from home. His mother worried for the safety of Mason and the rest of the family.



But children in crisis in North Carolina can wait weeks or months for a psychiatric bed because the state lacks the services to meet demand. And when spots do become available, they are expensive.



The standard rate at Central Regional was $1,338 a day, which Narsh could not afford. So, when a patient relations representative offered a discounted rate of less than $60 a day, her husband, Nathan, signed an agreement.



Mason, now 17, was hospitalized for more than 100 days in Central Regional over two separate stays that year, documents show.



But when requests for payment arrived the following year, Narsh said she was shocked. The letters — which were marked "final notice" and requested immediate payment — were signed by a paralegal in the office of Josh Stein, North Carolina's attorney general. The total bill, $101,546.49, was significantly more than the roughly $6,700 the Narshes expected to pay under their agreement with the hospital.

I guess this could be 1 reason people don't get help......

[herzlos]

The US system is just awful. I hope in the case you mentioned they can get back to settling on what was agreed because it's almost certainly an admin error but will still ruin lives.

I've seen a lot of cases where hospitals have quoted huge figures (~$1000) for something and then dropped it drastically (~$50) when someone has offered to pay cash, which just highlights how much overcharging is involved.

Then there's that  crap where the only route to hospital sectioning is via the police, which means a pretty high chance of calling the cops to help and have them shoot your kid instead. They don't have a good track record with intellectual disabilities on the best of days.

None of that's new though. So onto mental health at least from a UK perspective:

There's a LOT of stigma about mental health, but that's a separate issue. It seems to be slowly getting better though, but it'll take a while for a lot of people to open up about not being OK. There's been fairly regular campaigns in the UK to speak out.

Just think about how people view therapy now - My generation are quite open about it, but my parents generation view it as a thing of shame. I did some back in high school, but my parents would never dream of letting anyone know about it. Did it help? Who knows. It was probably nice to just feel like there was someone to talk to without judgement but I'm not sure I got better in any capacity. Most of my problems were probably undiagnosed ADHD though, with a dollop of being a teenager on top.

Even then, the waiting list for mental health care in the UK is horrific - with 4+ year waiting lists in many cases. No comments as to why.


There's lots of stuff popping up that seems to be focused on loneliness rather than mental health in general:
Mens sheds - which are like a pop-in workshop, you can go in borrow tools and work on stuff, though it's mostly a social thing, they do a lot of local repairs and stuff too.
Social walks and cycles - a mix of getting people active and socialising, both of which are great for mental health.

Drop in cafes, lunch clubs and so on, mostly in churches.

[pacific]

Jul 19, 2023 14:47:33 GMT -5 herzlos said:

Then there's that  crap where the only route to hospital sectioning is via the police, which means a pretty high chance of calling the cops to help and have them shoot your kid instead. They don't have a good track record with intellectual disabilities on the best of days.

That is insane. Feels like something Paul Verhoeven considered and then rejected as being too OTT. 

Agree on the UK comments too. The place I work in is really making an effort to try and help with mental health, with a fairly comprehensive campaign of staff awareness. We've mandated stress and wellbeing checks for managers too, I think partly off the back of how much lost working time there has been for mental health reasons. 

[herzlos]

I think this is the incident that came to mind: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54041549

I haven't had much luck figuring out the policy/approach to get someone urgent mental health care yet.

[easye]

'Gimme a break!' Biden blasts insurance hassles for mental health treatment

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/26/1190138272/biden-health-insurance-coverage-mental-health-parity

If you break your arm, you go to the doctor, your insurance (usually) pays. Why is it so much harder to get health insurance to pick up the tab if you have a mental health breakdown?

That's the question President Biden asked Tuesday as he touted new rules he says will get insurance to pay for mental health care more often.

The regulations are part of a proposed rule that would strengthen existing policies already on the books and close loopholes that have left patients with too few options for mental health care covered by insurance.

Biden specifically criticized the reauthorization process — where insurers make patients jump bureaucratic hurdles to get their care paid for.

"You get referrals to see mental health specialists," Biden said at a White House press conference Tuesday, "but when you make the appointment, they say, 'I can't see you until your doctor submits the paperwork and gets special permission from the insurance company.' Gimme a break."

A landmark law in 2008 called the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act tried to fix the parity issues, but insurers found loopholes and ways to avoid paying for care.

[bobtheinquisitor]

It is bizarre how little support there is for mental health care in a country where so many high profile ‘mentally ill’ people go on shifting sprees.

[Disciple of Fate]

Because if you actually help those that are mentally ill and shooting numbers don't go down, what other excuse could we point to?

[herzlos]

But helping people would be *communism*, even if by helping people you're helping yourself indirectly. Much better to risk getting hit by a few freedom bullets than *pay* for something for *someone else*.

[easye]

This is how seriously we take Mental Healthcare and Addiction treatment in the US....

A wasted chance to fight addiction? Opioid settlement cash fills a local budget gap

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/02/1191418632/a-wasted-chance-to-fight-addiction-opioid-settlement-cash-fills-a-local-budget-g

Over the past two years, as state attorneys general agreed to more than $50 billion in legal settlements with companies that made or sold opioids, they vowed the money would be spent on addiction treatment and prevention. They were determined to avoid the misdirection of the tobacco settlement of the 1990s, in which billions of dollars from cigarette companies went to plug budget gaps instead of funding programs to stop or prevent smoking.

But in at least one California county, history is repeating itself. And across the country, there are concerns about the lack of transparency regarding how this money will be used. Many local leaders are finding themselves in difficult positions: choosing between paying bills due today or investing in the fight against an ongoing crisis.

Mendocino County in rural Northern California has reported the highest rate of overdose deaths in the state. Yet, its board of supervisors decided to use more than $63,000 of opioid settlement funds — about 6.5% of all the settlement cash the county has received in the first two years of distribution— to help fill a general budget shortfall of about $6 million.

We care more about taxes....

[Haighus]

I was umming and arring about whether to stick this here or in business stuff.

I find it very depressing that a search for strategies to reduce impulse spending comes up with a shopify article about how to induce impulse spending in customers.

I think the whole industry of "platforms" just needs uprooting. Definitely terrible for society.

[herzlos]

I don't think it's platforms that's the problem as such. Capitalism as a whole is totally broken; anything that can be monetized is exploited ruthlessly unless there are laws against it. Like weight-loss schemes aimed at new mothers, online games designed to always be just out of reach without buying a power up, and so on.

[easye]

Suicide rates rose in 2022 overall but declined for teens and young adults

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/29/1215704543/suicide-rates-2022-teen-young-adults

"The number in 2022 is the highest ever recorded in the U.S," says Sally Curtin, a statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics and a lead author of the new report. "These are provisional data, so we expect the final number to actually be a little bit higher than that."

[easye]

Psychologists say they can't meet the growing demand for mental health care

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/12/06/1217487323/psychologists-waitlist-demand-mental-health-care

For the third consecutive year, many psychologists across the country say they are seeing patients struggle with worsening symptoms, many of them needing longer treatment times.

Those are among the findings of an annual survey by the American Psychological Association, released this week. The APA first launched this survey in 2020 to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing psychologists.

A majority of psychologists reported that more people are seeking mental health care this year, adding to already long waitlists. Over half (56%) said they had no openings for new patients. Among those who keep waitlists, average wait times were three months or longer and nearly 40% said that their waitlist had grown in the past year.

[easye]

This is my shocked face.....

Most Americans with mental health needs don't get treatment, report finds

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/12/13/1218953789/most-americans-with-mental-health-needs-dont-get-treatment-report-finds

Roughly two-thirds of Americans with a diagnosed mental health condition were unable to access treatment in 2021, though they had health insurance. And only a third of insured people who visited an emergency department or hospital during a mental health crisis, received follow-up care within a month of being discharged.

These are among the findings of a new report by the actuary firm Milliman, released Wednesday. The mental health advocacy group, Inseparable, commissioned the report and also released an accompanying brief offering policy solutions to address the gaps in mental health care.

This is impacting folks with Health Insurance, and those without.