Bipolar Disorder tagged posts

Criminalizing Mental Health in the United States

Melody_MoezziMelody Moezzi

More than 60 percent of the population in U.S. prisons are minorities, and by some accounts, the three largest mental health facilities in the country are prisons. CFYM continues its interview with attorney, author and mental health activist Melody Moezzi as she points to educating ourselves and the public about our legal rights as a means to righting these injustices.

Criminalizing Mental Health in the United States

CFYM: Melody, in addition to being an award-winning author, you are a public speaker, attorney and an advocate, you also have a Masters in public health. What changes would you like to see in public health policy with respect to mental health care?

MM: First, we need to stop criminalizing mental illness in the US. The three largest mental health facilities in this country are prisons. That’s beyond unacceptable, and it needs to change, particularly in a country that imprisons more of its citizens than any other on the planet. Furthermore, the use of solitary confinement—both in prisons and hospitals—needs to end. I feel very strongly about this because I’ve experienced “isolation,” and I have no doubt that it is cruel, unusual and downright inhuman. No human being is meant to live like that, even for a short period of time. We are social creatures. We need contact with others; we need compassion; we need connection—especially when we’re going through a crisis. That’s just human nature.

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Does Cultural Bipolarity Create Barriers to the Delivery of Quality Mental Health Care?

Melody Moezzi

Melody_MoezziWhat would it be like if your clinician didn’t understand your culture or treated you as something other than “normal” because of your ethnicity, religion, or gender?  Would you receive appropriate, effective treatment? Attorney, author and mental health activist Melody Moezzi talks with Care For Your Mind about how her religion influences her mental health and why the mental health care system should become more culturally competent.

Does Cultural Bipolarity Create Barriers to the Delivery of Quality Mental Health Care?

CFYM:  In your book, Hadol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life, you write about your experience living with and recovering from both clinical and cultural bipolarity. Can you expand on how you experienced cultural bipolarity?

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Tackling Disparities, Achieving Equity

vivianVivian H. Jackson, Ph.D.
National Center for Cultural Competence, National TA Center for Children’s Mental Health
Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development

We are a nation of immigrants, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our mental health care system. It’s hard enough to access quality mental health care services, but the challenge is even greater when cultural, racial, linguistic, or other demographic factors come into play. Today, Dr. Vivian Jackson blogs about what is being done to reduce the barriers to quality care and to promote culturally and linguistically appropriate services in mental health.

Tackling Disparities, Achieving Equity
How You Can Help Eliminate Disparities in Mental Health Care

What’s the problem?
As a society we claim to value fairness, yet every day there is evidence that we are a nation operating with significant disparities in mental health care. Is this fair? Are we offering services in a manner that meets the definition of fair: “not exhibiting any bias, and therefore reasonable and impartial”­?

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Case Study: Patient-Centric Mental Health Care Solutions

Senator David Carlucci
Chair, Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities
New York State Senate

CarlucciOn this blog a few days ago, Andrew Sperling of the National Alliance on Mental Illness raised questions about access to mental health treatments under the Affordable Care Act (ACA); and he voiced concerns about people being able to receive the specific mental health drugs they require once the health reform law is implemented.

As Mr. Sperling pointed out, restricting access to a full class of drugs and limiting prescribers’ option to one drug per class—which health plans can opt to do under ACA—can be short-sighted from an economics standpoint and disastrous from a health perspective. Without access to clinically appropriate medication, individuals with mental illness have higher rates of emergency room visits, hospitalization and other health services.

As Chair of the New York State (NYS) Senate Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, I understand that in order to manage the health of people living with serious mental illness, patients need guaranteed access to the full range of drugs and services that are most likely to improve their health. Even more important, I recognize that no one understands a patient’s needs better than his or her healthcare provider; and it’s presumptuous—if not irresponsible—to remove decision-making authority from that provider.

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Health Reform and Access to Prescription Drugs

Andrew Sperling, Director of Legislative Advocacy
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

Andrew Sperling, J.D.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers new choices for quality, reliable, low cost private health insurance and opens Medicaid to more people living with mental illness.

Under the law, all health plans are required to provide certain categories of benefits and services—so-called Essential Health Benefits (EHB). One of these is prescription drugs.

A question mark as to prescription drug coverage
While plans will be required to cover a minimum number of prescription drugs used to treat mental health conditions in a therapeutic class, each plan may choose to cover different medications; and the number of covered drugs will vary by state and by plan.  Most significant, the law does not require plans to cover all drugs in a particular therapeutic class.  As a result, medical and behavioral health plans can avoid covering specific drugs that, in your physician’s judgment, best address your needs.

This poses serious challenges for individuals who are in need of multiple drugs per class, particularly people with serious and persistent mental illness, chronic conditions and disabilities. Antipsychotic medications, for example, are not clinically interchangeable, and providers must be able to select the most appropriate, clinically indicated medication for their patients.  What’s more, physicians may need to change medications over the course of an illness as patients suffer side-effects or their illness is less responsive to a particular drug, and patients requiring multiple medications may need access to alternatives to avoid harmful interactions.

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