Peer discussion responce to mental health parity and...

peer discussion responce to Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act I have noticed since I have been researching the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act that there are still many drawbacks to this act. Some of the things that I have read in my research repeatedly is the fact that mental health and substance abuse are to be parity in finances, which is not happening. There are insurance providers that do, but not all. There is also a problem with finding providers covered under the insurance provider plan. Another issue is that there are not enough mental health providers. Some patients must wait months to get treatment, which is not good when it comes to mental health. I read that due to some of the waiting, there has been a rise in suicides. There is also the cost to the employers of having insurance as a downfall.

Transcript

00:01 All right, so we have three different questions here dealing with suicide prevention, mental illness, mental health, and so on.

00:09 So for the first one, how do suicide prevention programs affect health care delivery either positively or negatively? so when we talk about suicide prevention, for instance, the question gives us the idea of hotlines that you can call if you're thinking of harming yourself or if you come across the information that someone else is harming themselves, thinking of harming themselves, you'd call the hotline.

00:41 And i'd argue that this is largely a positive version, a feature of the healthcare system because they provide immediate support for people who need it in a very urgent situation.

00:56 Like, a suicidal person, if this hotline system did not exist.

01:04 If they were thinking of getting help and they wanted to be seen by a medical professional, what would they do? go to the emergency room and, you know, you wait like four hours in the emergency room and it would be absurd.

01:14 So people that need help and care urgently would not be getting it.

01:20 So the immediacy of the support.

01:23 And it's also widely accessible.

01:25 Like, all you'd have to do is call a number.

01:28 So financially, like, it's free to call the hotline.

01:31 So people that might not seek, you know, therapy or psychological services because of barriers to financially speaking can still get support from hotlines.

01:50 The negatives are, you know, the extent to follow up.

01:54 Like if you see a primary care provider, you schedule an appointment and then you could regularly see them.

01:59 Or like if you're in therapy, you might go once a week.

02:02 If you call a hotline, there's no one that's going to be periodically checking up on you or making it a consistent thing.

02:07 It just addresses the immediate scenario.

02:12 So that's kind of a drawback.

02:15 Question two.

02:15 Why would someone suffering from a mentalist potentially not seek treatment? well, we kind of touched upon it in the first question.

02:22 Money might be a factor.

02:24 Depending on someone's constraints with insurance or out -of -pocket costs, it might not be financially accessible to seek medical treatment.

02:34 There also might be an education issue, lack of awareness about, like for instance, if people don't know that mental health issues are a thing, they might think, oh, this is just how everyone is.

02:46 Like, if you had never heard of depression and you felt depressed because your hormone levels were off, you might just think, oh, everyone feels this way...

Question

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