Advantage Of Mental Health Care

The TED Talk referenced in this paper made some great points regarding health care for those who have mental health illnesses and how the life expectancy gap can be around 20 years less for those who suffer from a mental health disorder (Patel, 2016). Quality of Life (QOL) and the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) are two things that classify burden of disease for those who suffer from illnesses, and not just mental health illnesses but also from medical disorders such as pneumonia. The main point of Patel’s TED talk was that the vast majority of those who need care do not receive it and the shortage of mental health professionals around the world has become a problem, and his solution to this is appointing lay counselors who are trained

The large number of uninsured children and limitations to behavioral health care coverage are problems that public policy in the United States have attempted to fix because “traditionally, insurers and employers have covered treatment for mental health conditions differently than treatment for physical conditions” (Goodell, 2014). There is a major shortage of health care professionals around the world, not just in countries like India that Patel mentions in his speech, and since the majority of mental health care professionals are in urban, high-income areas “the lack of mental health care providers in rural areas as well as in pediatrics has been well documented” (Goodell, 2014). One advantage to this all-involved health care is that there will be more access to those who are in rural areas, minorities, or children with disabilities. These are the groups that fall into the gap between the need for health care and the actual providing of effective care that go into practice in the community (MacKinnon-Lewis, 2016). Another advantage is that those who fall into this gap could experience less stigma if there are people in the community actively doing something to provide effective