Mental Health Care System Unemployed

Can the Mental Health Care System Be Improved in Treating the Unemployed?

Can the Mental Health Care System Be Improved in Treating the Unemployed? The issue of unemployment has been a heavy topic of American politics for decades, with both political parties debate on how to lower the unemployment rate and offer assistance to those who cannot find jobs. These political efforts were not in vain; the overall unemployment rate has gradually decreased over the past seven years. However, the length of unemployment has remained constant over the same time period, with little fluctuation and even a slight increase in recent years. This raises concerns in the psychological effects on the unemployed, as the longer that Americans are

Currently, roughly 1 in 4 Americans on Medicare have some sort of mental illness as opposed to 1 in 9 Americans not on Medicare (NAMI, 2017b; Center for Medicare Advocacy [CMA], 2012; Supplemental Security Income [SSI], 2012). This introduces an issue, as health care should cover mental health benefits for those on Medicare, since they are more likely to have a mental illness. James Bennet, Terry Tang, and Linda Cohn, the op-ed division of the editorial board of the New York Times, reviewed the 2013 regulation passed by the Obama administration to expand the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to further cover mental health benefits, which would supposedly help people previously unable to afford mental health care, where before, upwards of 60% of the mentally ill unable to receive the treatment they need (Bennet, J., Tang, T., & Cohn, L., 2013). The original ACA regulation passed in 2008, called the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), was meant to ensure equal coverage of treatment for mental illness. In theory, this would have been a viable solution to help the mental health system in treating patients, such as the unemployed. However, the act never included requirements of implementation. The

(Continue) The unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, are psychologically more at risk than those who are employed to suffer from psychological illnesses, increasing the number of unemployed patients in the mental health system. (Continue) While efforts have been made to improve the mental health care system, none have fulfilled their intended purpose; to come to a viable solution, one must look at the problems in the mental health system politically, economically, and psychologically.