Mental Illness in the United States and Government Policies

While the U.S. government has passed many bills and laws protecting the rights of the mentally ill and the people around them, there are many aspects of the mental health program that point to the fact that there is still much work to be done.
A government-funded program, the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI, insists that despite its $978.4 million budget, the world of mental illness is still remarkably underfunded[1]. This as well as a recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine shows that mental illness is among the most underfunded conditions in comparison to the burden that it takes upon society[2]. Statistics show that every year 61.4 million adults live with a mental illness, which is one in every four. 13.1 million live with a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, accounting for one in every seventeen[3]. Twenty percent of kids from ages 13-18 experience severe mental illness disorders in a given year[4]. On top of all that, twenty percent of state prisoners have recent history of mental illness[5]. Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost earnings every year, yet despite all of the facts, the issue of mental health is often just pushed aside to make room for ‘more important issues’[6]. According to Journal Health Affairs, the U.S gives $113 billion to the mental health program, which is just 5.6 percent of the money given to health care. The underfunding of health care makes getting treatment expensive; a survey showed that 45% of the untreated cited cost as a reason to skip the process, and only a quarter of the participants to receive treatment marked themselves as the primary payer for mental health services[7]. Increasing the budget for the mental heal...

... middle of paper ...

...did not teach about mental illness. A possible solution would be to raise awareness by adequately funding the project, increasing the capacity in local health centers and creating awareness in schools. Recently, the previously unused lobotomy procedure began being used again in order to help those with epilepsy. In order to discontinue inhumane procedures such as this, more funding must be provided to organizations specializing in drug research for mental health. Although drugs are not always reliable, lobotomies kill 6% of their patients according to recent studies[48], and futuristic medication is becoming simpler and simpler to use with fewer side effects. While the mental health system in the U.S could be considered in crisis, increased funding in numerous aspects of the mental health program can quickly turn around the disappointing outcomes seen in the past.