Crisis In Mental Health – Mental Health Grows Whilst Spending Is Cut

Writer: Robert Valenzuela on Jul 16 2010.

Increasing demands for health care services has gone up even in the face of the devastating global crisis  – yet financially hard up care centers are downgrading their services, due to deep cuts in mental health appropriations from the government.

This is the finding of the research by Brandies University which will be published later this year in the Journal of Mental Health.

State and local governments are responsible for mental health spending in the U.S.

According to author Dominic Hodgkin, associate professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis, states and counties are now cutting this funding to deal with their budget crises.

In one survey, it stated that there are 32 mental health institutions that cut their funding in 1992 alone.

The cut is a whopping 4.9 percent of the total budget.

Mostly affected are certain children and adult in patient and managem ent services, the survey continued.

Medicaid payments have become impossible to meet resulting in insufficient services even for the most basic requirements.

More than a dozen states have decreased their shares in Medicaid contributions and have removed some of them completely.

Hodgkin said that it is likely that the current cuts, made on top of earlier cuts, are affecting the delivery of core services.

While it discusses the events overtaking the state of mental health in the USA, it also touched the mental health situation in the international level.

Nevertheless, said Hodgkin, there are a handful of bright spots.

The UK has designated stimulus money specifically for treating workers who have lost their jobs and are suffering anxiety and depression as a result.

The plan includes training 3,600 psychotherapists and hundreds of specialized nurses to be deployed to counseling centers.

Like China, Hongkong has trained doctors and nurses to deal with the rising number of mental cases associated with the financial crises.

“The recession poses formidable challenges for mental health services in the coming years,” said Hodgkin. “While there are encouraging signs here and there of enlightened responses from governments that recognize the value of mental health services, in most countries, spending is being cut dramatically.”

Hodgkin advised more systematic tracking of need and spending on mental health services, to enable policymakers to identify problem areas and good ideas for responding to recessions.

His paper appears in a special issue of the International Journal of Mental Health focused on how recessions affect the prevalence and treatment of mental illness.

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