JAMA Viewpoint Characterizes Current Model for Treating Mentally Ill as “Ethically Unacceptable and Financially Costly”
As the United States population has doubled since 1955, the number of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States has been cut by nearly 95 percent to just 45,000, a wholly inadequate equation when considering that there are currently 10 million U.S. residents with serious mental illness. A new viewpoint in JAMA,written by Dominic Sisti, PhD, Andrea Segal, MS, and Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, of the department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, looks at the evolution away from inpatient psychiatric beds, evaluates the current system for housing and treating the mentally ill, and then suggests a modern approach to institutionalized mental health care as a solution.
“For the past 60 years or more, social, political and economic forces coalesced to move severely mentally ill patients out of psychiatric hospitals,” write the authors. They say the civil rights movement propelled deinstitutionalization, reports of hospital abuse offended public consciousness, and new drugs gave patients independence. In addition, economics and federal policies accelerated the transformation because outpatient therapy and drug treatment were less expensive than inpatient care, and the federal legislation like the Community Mental Health Centers Act and Medicaid led to states closing or limiting the size of so-called institutions for mental diseases.
However, the authors write, “deinstitutionalization has really been transinstitutionalization.” Some patients with chronic psychiatric diseases were moved to nursing homes or hospitals. Others became homeless, utilizing hospital emergency departments for both care and housing. But “most disturbingly, U.S. jails and prisons have become the nation’s largest mental health care facilities. Half of all inmates have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder; 15 percent of state inmates are diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.” According to the authors, “this results in a vicious cycle whereby mentally ill patients move between crisis hospitalization, homelessness and incarceration.”
Read more: Penn Medicine Bioethicists Call for Return to Asylums for Long-Term Psychiatric Care
The Latest on: Long-Term Psychiatric Care
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Long-Term Psychiatric Care” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Long-Term Psychiatric Care
- CCHR Rebukes Psychiatric Association Meeting for Failure to Denounce Coercionon April 26, 2024 at 5:13 pm
In the wake of the World Health Organization, World Psychiatric Association and European Psychiatric Congress condemning coercive psych practices, a mental health watchdog asks why an APA Meeting has ...
- Action needed to protect kids’ mental health from social media, bipartisan panelists sayon April 26, 2024 at 3:09 pm
The kids are not all right, and replacing socializing with social media contributes to it. That consensus emerged during a public dialogue Friday on the mental health challenges faced by America’s ...
- Full-spectrum mental health care changes liveson April 26, 2024 at 5:38 am
One in five adults nationwide experience mental illness, and nearly one-third of those people do not receive the treatment needed.
- Are parental psychiatric disorders related to the risk of autism spectrum disorder in the offspring?on April 26, 2024 at 4:31 am
The potential association between psychiatric disorders in parents and the risk of the offspring developing autism spectrum disorder.
- Viewpoint: COVID brought us a second pandemic — the mental health crisison April 26, 2024 at 2:38 am
There's a pressing need to enlighten our various communities to the fact that jail is not a substitute for mental health or recovery facilities.
- Family of suspect in Colorado attempted school kidnapping pleads for more state mental health resourceson April 25, 2024 at 9:53 pm
An Aurora family is speaking out after one of their loved ones was arrested for allegedly walking onto a school playground and attempting to kidnap a child.
- 'The system failed him': Family had sought mental health care for man shot at Suncoast Highon April 25, 2024 at 2:30 am
The man's brother says an attempt to get him care during the weekend failed when doctors released him from a hospital without notifying his family.
- 'A complete failure': The plight of 2 teens lays bare the absence of mental health care for girlson April 25, 2024 at 2:28 am
PROVIDENCE – The dire state of psychiatric care for teenage girls in crisis in Rhode Island is laid bare in two recent state Supreme Court rulings. In both cases, the state Department of Children, ...
- Assisted living mental health services fell between 2019 and 2020, study findson April 24, 2024 at 11:59 pm
Mental health visits for assisted living residents with dementia dropped as the pandemic set in, a new study finds.
- What is your long-term care plan?on April 22, 2024 at 10:00 pm
According to a survey conducted by VerstaResearch in 2020, 96% of Americans surveyed feel it is important for families to talk about their long-term care preferences. However, 93% of financial ...
via Bing News