Mental health service consumers changing system

[Jolyn]

It's still a shock for some that enough people with major mental illnesses have been able to organize a virtual overhaul of the mental health system culture. Consumer rights, individualized services, consumer voice and consumer choice, as examples, are now cornerstones of this new culture. There's much more to do, but it was primarily consumers in the mental health system who initiated and continue to lead this far-reaching, anti-stigmatizing and rights-oriented campaign. To understand more about the development of the mental health consumer movement, select this document in doc or pdf form from The National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse.

Partnerships with service providers, peer-run programs, consumer public speaking bureaus, advance mental health directives, consumer rights and so forth now permeate publicly funded mental health. All of these grew from grass-roots consumer initiatives throughout the country. For more on how the consumer movement is changing US mental health services, read this enlightening article on the NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) web site.

To give credit where it's due, some mental health practitioners and involved family members were there supporting the early consumer movement and its efforts. Most would say they embrace it wholeheartedly now, but some practitioners, local systems and program models are better at walking the talk than others. More on this later. Stay tuned!

[Barbara Steinberg]

The National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse article was extremely enlightening. I love the organizational name "Insane Liberation Front." Only in America would all members of an organization like this not be locked away, but humor aside...

At the beginning of this century, the abuse of involuntary commitment, and mental health care overall was cruel and unusual punishment to many innocent people, and the courage of those who changed our culture should be remembered and celebrated. I'm so glad you sited this article.

Recipients of mental health services should demand control over their own treatment. The doctors must listen to them as they are the ones living with the side effects of the medication that is treating symptoms that would make them a danger to themselves or others. But the patient-doctor-caretaker relationship is always a complex and ever-changing one, as a symptom or side effect could change at any time, and the communication between all three parts of this equation must be absolutely clear.

Our challenge is to take the profit out of health care for those patients who are loss statements: for example, a patient who needs $30,000 in medical and pharmaceutical care, but only collects $12,000 in Social Security payments. The government still has Medicare and Medicaid for these people, but governors are trying to cut those budgets. Because the profit motive has been so ensconced in the American health care system, a patient needs a caretaker to get through the bureaucracy to receive deserved benefits. There is no private insurance plan anywhere who will cover someone who needs care that costs twice their income because no business plan exists for such people.

That is why I'm for socialized medicine.