Thursday, May 08, 2003

U.S. Lags in Treating Mental Illness
Story at HealthScout on new research published in the journal Health Affairs - "The United States has a greater percentage of mentally ill citizens than some other countries but typically provides less treatment for their problems, new research has found. The study, which compared five nations in the Americas and Europe, found the United States had the highest prevalence of people who report some form of emotional trouble, at nearly 30 percent." See also the article in Health Affairs, Common Concerns Amid Diverse Systems: Health Care Experiences In Five Countries (Adobe Acrobat).  
  

Patients suffer when mental health services switched
Reuters story - "Health insurance programs that use subcontractors to provide mental health services may be saving money at the expense of patient care, researchers said on Wednesday. Duke University researchers looked at what happened when Tennessee's Medicaid program subcontracted, or 'carved out,' its mental health treatment programs in 1996. They found that the number of people not getting the treatment they needed increased by 18 percent." See also Transition to mental health carveouts disrupts care for most fragile, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center press release about a study in the May 8 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine that "describes the disruptive effects that a transition to a mental health 'carveout' system in Tennessee had on antipsychotic therapy for people with schizophrenia, and how lessons about the chaotic transition could help other states' programs."