“Even more than other areas of health and medicine, the mental health field is plagued by disparities in the availability of and access to its services,” (Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General). After school shootings like Newtown and Columbine, many are calling from strong mental health care, and safety. More often than not, shooters involved in school shootings, or any act of terrorism for that matter, have unmet mental health needs. The mental health care system in the United States is a multibillion-dollar industry that is still not adequate enough to help all those who need it. Not only does the attitude and stigma towards mental illness affect the care provided, but cost and budget also attributes as a big barrier. The United States spends 113 billion dollars on mental health treatment. To some that may seem as more than enough but that sum only works out to be about 5.6 percent of the nation’s health care spending. Most of the 113 billion dollars spent goes toward prescription drugs and outpatient care. This shows the shift away from institutionalizing. By treating the rest in the least-restrictive settings possible, the thinking went, we would protect the civil liberties of the mentally ill and hasten their …show more content…
One-third of homeless people have some kind of undiagnosed mental illness. Over the past 20 years the homeless population has grown by 363 percent. In a New York Times article, Piper Hoffman writes that while walking through the streets of Berkeley, California, “it’s like a mental ward on the streets.” Many of those mentally ill who are living on streets are living lives unimaginable. Many are victimized, not only for being homeless, but for also being mentally ill. These budget cuts are only making the lives of fellow Americans worse. These budget cuts are making it so that the trashcan is becoming the primary food source for a fairly large percentage of the