Mental Health Should Become Focus Of Affordable Care Act

I realize that most of our debate over healthcare has been an unhealthy debate over health insurance premiums and provider networks, but I suspect that we might move past all of this stuff when it becomes a normal part of everyday life.

For now I will simply dream of the day that healthcare, as a matter of debate, brings us closer to healthcare as a matter of civic responsibility.  More importantly, it might be time to closely examine the healthcare conversation as it relates to mental health.  Many of our current societal shortcomings can be traced back to the root cause of mental illness.

Mental illness appears in the PTSD of homeless soldiers or personality disorder for their homeless friend.  We have mental illness with our children who are shooting up schools  when they commit suicide, or the mental illness of those who haphazardly allow kids access to guns.  We recognize the need and offer free mental healthcare for the surviving children, even if only for a short time.

Mental illness is impacting the parents who are suffering from the depression of a lost career.  Mental illness  extends itself into our children who continue to see the destruction of the American family happening before their eyes, and grow up blaming themselves for it.  Even our physical health, which has suffered due to the lack of affordable healthcare options, is better than our mental health which, by and large, gets ignored as a separate problem and not the actual root. We won't even begin to discuss mental healthcare for convicted felons (another blog for another day).

When we stop yelling about the cause and discuss ideas for a solution, we may finally agree on the problem.  Abortion will never be removed by laws so must be minimized through mental health support.  School shootings will never be eliminated with tougher gun laws but could improve with better mental health screening of at risk children.  Depression, PTSD, personality disorders are all common problems with common solutions that begin in the office of a mental health professional.

The physical health of our nation is connected to the mental health of each individual.  Affordable care is important, but proper care is vital.  It would be exceedingly sad for us to usher in the era of universal care for all and remain functionally just as sick as before.

In fact it would be more than sad.  It would be crazy.