Failure™ Magazine

Healing the Broken Mind

Transforming America’s failed mental health system.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Life, Science & Technology

With all the talk about health care reform, there hasn’t been a lot of discussion about mental health care. Why aren’t they considered together?
Myself and others are trying to do that. There are voices on the Hill, like Patrick Kennedy, who is a representative for Rhode Island. He’s introducing mental health components to the health care agenda. But you’re right, there are no towering voices and that’s one of the problems. Mental health care isn’t a sexy topic, there isn’t much of a constituency out there, and it’s pretty hard to build a political career on championing mental health. So there is a need for leadership to step forward on behalf of Americans who struggle with mental illness. All we can do is hope and pray that people will indeed step forward, perhaps in this upcoming cycle of health care reform.

Is there a country that the U.S. can use as a model for reform?
Yes, Australia has done a pretty good job of creating an outcome-oriented system of care. They collect outcome data on a regular basis and it has been very helpful in terms of fine-tuning what works and figuring out what doesn’t.

Some states here in the U.S. have begun implementing similar systems. Virginia started a pilot program under my tenure that led to a focus on clinical outcomes, for instance. So there are efforts being made in that direction.

One of the points I make in my book, though, is that unless we can move ahead on all five fronts we aren’t going to get very far. We are going to end up with basically the same status quo system.

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