Should the government increase funding for mental health research and treatment?

This could easily be abused. How should we prevent this abuse?

this feels like a backhanded compliment

i dont exist skull emoji

#2 Engaged Healthcare #2 Engaged Ethics Expert Mental Health

Mental health professionals are more than just psychiatry. Psychiatry certainly can be criticized for it's reliance on solely the medical model and only approaching treatment through medication, but that's because psychiatry is a subfield of medicine. Professional counselors and clinical social workers also treat mental health conditions and have different approaches to it. I am a social worker in mental health. You are partly right in that the medical model relies too heavily on diagnosis and pathologizing what may be normal reactions in context. Diagnosable condition or not, we…  Read more all can have good or poor mental health and many people can benefit from a professional to help improve it, just like physically healthy people go to the doctor for routine and preventive healthcare treatment. Trauma is an example of something that isn't caused by a chemical imbalance yet is critical to be treated by a mental health professional. There's also a difference between normal emotional reactions and emotional responses or dysregulation that cause extreme pain to the person experiencing them or cause them to harm others. Mental health treatment is more than emotions. It's about adjusting communication patterns, helping people recognize and stop maladaptive cognition, and teaching people skills and how their brain works. We also help families resolve dysfunctional communication patterns. Finally, trust me. No one is in mental health care to profit. As far as social work goes, our code of ethics includes several principles that prioritize beneficence and protect clients. This is not a high paying field even with a graduate degree and clinical licensure. Most of us work in community mental health centers, schools, nonprofits, and public health agencies where there's no profit whatsoever and many clients aren't paying for services. Even in private practice, the needs, safety, and wellbeing of the client come first. People who want to take advantage of others get weeded out pretty quickly in grad school, their practicums, licensure complaints, or clinical supervision. Even for psychiatrists, psychiatry is one of the lowest paying medical specialties. If you're in it for the money without a lot of extra difficulty, that would be dermatology and radiology.

#2 Engaged Healthcare Expert Mental Health

“People avoiding treatment and rehabilitation due to fear of potential perceived risk of punishment due to having a controversial illness is counterproductive.”

Totally agree on the sentiments of this comment. A lot of people don't seek out mental health services due to stigma. At least for mental health professionals, we have much more stringent standards for confidentiality than even regular healthcare professionals, and we go to great lengths to protect privacy. The hard parts are the things we can't control. I can ask for signed permission before disclosing that a person is receiving treatment or what their diagnosis is. I can refuse subpoenas unless they're accompanied by a court order and even then I can go to court with a lawyer…  Read more and request the info be limited to the judge's eyes only or argue that releasing the info would harm the client. But I can't control if I work in a small town where everyone knows the places where mental health care is provided and someone recognizes your car parked out front. I can't control if the cops who also responded to your mental health crisis and brought you to me joke about it and make fun of you with colleagues over lunch or at the station. If any one change would make a difference I think holding other professionals like cops and doctors to the same standards of mental health professionals and penalizing them for sharing info too would be helpful. I also think if we reduce mental health stigma and normalize therapy as something even people without mental health conditions can benefit from, people won't feel as much need to keep it a secret or fear negative consequences.

#2 Engaged Healthcare Expert Mental Health

Speaking as a social worker and mental health clinician, state mental hospitals are not and never were the answers to our mental health crisis. People were not properly treated in these places. They were abused physically and psychologically and their rights violated. I highly recommend the book "Madness in Civilization" by Scull. As mental health professionals, it is unethical for us to remove the rights or autonomy of people with mental health conditions that aren't at imminent risk to themselves or another person. Research over the last several decades has also shown that…  Read more community based treatment is far more effective at treating Serious Mental Illness (mental health conditions with psychotic symptoms such as the schizophrenia spectrum, Bipolar 1, etc) than institutions. The problem is that when deinstitutionalization happened, Congress and state legislatures refused to properly fund community mental health centers and Assertive Community Treatment teams. The wait lists for mental healthcare for low income and uninsured people are staggering. So in short, the solution you're proposing is unethical and will actively harm people with mental health conditions.

#2 Engaged Healthcare Expert Mental Health

“I think that people are self-diagnosing themselves as an excuse for their own benefit/advantage.”

Self-diagnosis doesn't provide any advantages or benefits in any domain other than potentially socially (e.g. being able to find communities of others with similar experiences). For disability benefits, workplace and educational accommodations, and social programs, a formal diagnosis from a licensed mental health professional (e.g. clinical social worker, professional counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist) is required. There's problems with requiring formal diagnosis that I've run into with people especially seeking accommodations. For one, mental health professionals are expen…  Read moresive even if you have insurance. For people who are uninsured and/or low income, the waitlists for community mental health centers can be months to years long if there's even one anywhere near you. Psychological testing, which is required for diagnosis of neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Intellectual Disability, Specific Learning Disability, etc. is often not covered by insurance or has much longer wait times. There are also diagnoses that are highly stigmatizing and can lead to future discrimination from other healthcare providers with less or no mental health training who see your chart later, adverse legal consequences in child custody battles if the court orders your mental health records disclosed, denial of a security clearance or pilot license, and being prohibited from joining the military. A significant example is borderline personality disorder (any personality disorder really) or pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder. At the end of the day, a diagnosis is just a group of symptoms. If a person is experiencing those symptoms, we're going to use the same interventions as someone with a diagnosis including those symptoms. If a person is experiencing emotional volatility and unstable personal relationships, we're going to use Dialectical Behavioral Therapy whether they have a BPD diagnosis or not. It also means people will benefit from the same support groups and resources. So at the end of the day, if self-diagnosis results in increased social support for a person, there's no harm being done or benefits they're getting unfairly.

Yes. Communities and people are a much better solution to mental health issues than government funding.

Mental health is not the problem, the problem it ‘s our hyper individualistic, consumeristic culture that drives people to have bad mental health, I would recommend people to learn about Johan Hari a British journalist who wrote a book about addiction and depression, he makes great points of the mental health crisis we’re dealing with. I also recommend people to demand more people’ friendly cities, car centric cars makes people more lonely, depressed,