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Reports Outline Roadmap To Reform Mental Health System

SAMHSA's Action Agenda Sets Goals

The following are among the goals for federal agencies to work toward as they lead and facilitate change in mental health care at the federal, state, and local levels and in the private sector:

• Reinforce the message that mental illnesses and emotional disturbances are treatable and that recovery is the expectation.
  
• Act immediately to reduce the number of suicides in the nation through implementation of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, launched by HHS in 2001.
  
• Help states develop the infrastructure necessary to formulate and implement comprehensive state mental health plans that include the capacity to create individualized plans of care that promote resilience and recovery.
  
• Develop a plan to promote a mental health workforce better qualified to practice mental health care that is culturally sensitive and based on evidence-based practices in both specialty settings and at the primary care level.
  
• Initiate a national effort focused on the mental health needs of children and promote early intervention with informed parental consent for children identified to be at risk for mental disorders. Prevention and early intervention can help forestall or prevent disease and disability.
  
• Expand the "Science-to-Services" agenda to develop new toolkits outlining evidence-based practices for use by providers, administrators, educators, and consumers.
  
• Increase the employment of people with psychiatric disabilities.
  
• Design and initiate an electronic health records and information system that will help providers and consumers better manage mental health care and that will protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers' health information.
  

CMHR Lays Out Roadmap

These are among the 28 action items included in CMHR's "Emergency Response" roadmap:

• End discrimination by health insurance plans through enactment of parity legislation this year.
  
• Better utilize Medicaid dollars by providing cost-effective home- and community-based care in lieu of institutional care and permitting states to utilize Medicaid dollars for comprehensive treatment plans.
  
• Allow families to buy into Medicaid to access services for a child with a disability, including emotional and behavioral disorders.
  
• End the unconscionable and costly "warehousing" of youth with mental disorders.
  
• End discrimination against mental health treatment in Medicare, which requires higher copayments for mental health outpatient care and limits inpatient hospital coverage for mental health treatment.
  
• Provide early identification and effective treatment for returning veterans at risk of post-traumatic stress disorders and their families.
  
• Provide early detection and intervention services to mothers and children who receive health care at federally funded maternal and child health clinics.
  
• Permit presumptive eligibility for Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid for people who are homeless and have a serious mental illness.
  
• Fund programs to divert mentally ill people who have committed nonviolent crimes into treatment instead of jail or prison.
  

Related Article:

Two Reports Point Government To More Effective MH System

Aaron Levin
Psychiatr News 2005 40: 1-28. [Full Text]

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