The success stories are out there, you just have to be willing to look hard enough to find them.
That’s what Tom Walker, an Ohio University professor emeritus of political science who has family and friends with mental illnesses, said about finding peace and stability with treatment.
The people dearest to him, struggling with mental illness, are “so lucky” to have established jobs with health insurance to get them to a stable place.
But for each of these insured individuals, Walker, a member of the Athens chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said there are even more who go without the medical attention they need.
It’s an uphill battle for them, Walker said.
“Our health care system is among the worst in the developed world, and it’s also the most expensive in the developed world,” Walker said. “…Within health care, care for the mentally ill is worse still. We have a really horrible situation caring for the mentally ill.
“The Affordable Care Act is going to make it better.”
More people could afford treatment
From July 2011 to June 2012, almost 5,000 residents of Athens, Hocking and Vinton counties received treatment from the Athens-Hocking-Vinton County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board and other local providers.
Next year, health insurance firms are required to offer plans for mental health services through the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare.” When that happens, Earl Cecil, executive director of the board, estimated that annual figure could balloon to as many as 11,000 patients within a decade.
Problems won’t be solved overnight, he said, but it’ll be a start toward everyone getting the care they need.
“We’re talking six (or) seven years down the road,” Cecil said, alluding to the fact that the new health care overhaul might not be perfect.
But “(People with mental illness) are going to be in a better situation than they are with no coverage,” he said.
Still, Cecil doesn’t share Walker’s enthusiastic optimism of the health care overhaul effort.
Between the scheduled opening of insurance exchanges Tuesday and the impending debate of Medicaid expansion in Ohio, Cecil said he’s unsure of what the future may bring. He added the region needs about six more psychiatrists to handle the extra caseload that is projected to come with the implementation of “Obamacare.”
“I think the capacity in Southeast Ohio is maxed out already,” Cecil said.
Young Adults could benefit, too
Other aspects of the new law might safeguard young adults with mental illnesses who otherwise could be negatively affected by a shortage of mental health professionals, said Beth Strassman, a specialist for Integrated Services of Appalachian Ohio, an organization that aids the mentally ill.
Now that children can stay on their guardian’s insurance plan until they are 26, Strassman said hopefully fewer mentally ill young adults will turn to the streets.
“A lot of times you’ll go until 25 or 30 without knowing you have a mental illness and there you are without health insurance,” Strassman said. “How do you pay for it to just get a diagnosis?”
Walker added that the twenties are often the most challenging period for mentally ill adults.
“Mental illness rips a hole in the early part of your life out,” Walker said. “…Their schooling was interrupted probably, and they have very little job experience and on top of it, there is the stigma that they have mental illness.”
The costs of counseling sessions and potentially lifelong medications can financially drive these people into the ground, making health insurance a necessity, Strassman said.
“(Mental illness) is like diabetes; (patients) are always in some level of treatment,” Cecil said.
Expanding medicaid has ties to mental illness
Strassman, Walker and Cecil agree that the most effective means of maintaining lifelong mental illness treatment hinges on possible expansion of Medicaid in Ohio.
An expanded Medicaid program would cover anyone who can’t afford insurance through the exchanges. However, states have to approve the expansion first.
Currently, Medicaid provides insurance for those who have children or a disability and an income that is at or lower than 90 percent of the poverty level.
If the state legislature approves the expansion, federal assistance would be offered to households with an income at or lower than 138 percent of the poverty level and to adults without any children or a disability. The expansion was stripped from Gov. John Kasich’s original budget proposal this spring.
“For a lot of (mentally ill patients), without expanding Medicaid, they will continue to struggle,” Strassman said.
Walker believes “Obamacare” — for all its potential flaws — will be good for the mentally ill.
As more patients get back on their feet and back to work, he said the negative stigma of mental illness is slowly becoming a thing of the past.
“People will go back to work, and the rest of the community will see them as working citizens,” he said. “Increasingly more people are open to talking about their mental illness and so, people will see this person is a perfectly good person, who just happens to have a mental illness they have under control.”
sh335311@ohiou.edu
@SamuelHHoward
