¶ … Health and Well-Being of a Chosen Group: Diagnosed mental disorders

Barriers

Barriers to assistance for diagnosed mental disorders exist on the individual, community, and social level. On an individual level, people are often reluctant to admit to themselves that they are mentally ill, or a refusal to recognize that they are ill is actually part of the pathology of their illness. On a social level, discomfort in dealing with people who are mentally ill, a lack of financial resources for treatment (particularly for the poor but even for members of the middle class that lack enough insurance for extensive mental health coverage) can also create barriers to care. A lack of financial resources in general can prevent a full, expansive treatment option being offered combining necessary psychopharmacology and therapy even for patients who are able to afford some types of care.

Regulatory, legal, ethical, and accreditation requirements/issues

On a personal level, many mental illnesses contain a certain amount of denial: depressives do not think they are worthy of seeking care; eating disordered patients are afraid of abandoning their coping mechanisms; bipolar patients in the grips of mania have a sense of immortality or special insight into the human condition. But other barriers exist. Patients with mental disorders are less likely to be employed and to have insurance and even those who do (and the numbers will be expanding, hopefully, given the recent passage of the Affordable...

A recent APA study found that "more than 57% of patients now receive medication without psychotherapy, up from 44%. The percentage who receive psychotherapy only has dropped from almost 16% to 10.5%, while the percentage who receive a combination has dropped from 40% to 32%" (Clay 2004). Even patients under the care of providers are often seeing only a primary care physician. "Insurers will often pay for drugs but not for psychological interventions…prescribing medication is more convenient for physicians, nurses and others than providing psychotherapy" (Clay 2004).
Solutions

Although mental health patients cannot always be relied upon to seek out appropriate care for themselves, there is a role for mental health advocacy organizations to actively disseminate knowledge about the symptoms of mental illnesses, versus…