The Cost of Not Caring

I read an article posted on the USA Today website that was very insightful and gave me plenty of ideas for my documentary film. It was titled “The cost of Not Caring” and as the title suggests, it was about how society just doesn’t care about people with mental illnesses and the price society has to pay. There were a lot of surprising statistics such as, more than half a million of Americans who have a mental illness have nowhere to go and often land in jails, the emergency room, or the streets. Due to insurance pressures, states have been reducing hospital beds for decades. “Tight budgets during the recession forced some of the most devastating cuts in recent memory”, says Robert Glover, executive director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. $5 billion in mental health services was cut from 2009 to 2012 by states. The country eliminated nearly 10% of public psychiatric hospital beds in the same period. All these cuts result in people with mental illnesses getting no care at all. according to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 40% of adults with a  severe mental illness received no treatment in 2011. This includes people with schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder. This article focuses on the human and financial costs that the country pays for not caring about the 10 million Americans with serious mental illness. "The way we pay for mental health today is the most expensive way possible,” Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, says. "We don't provide support early, so we end up paying for lifelong support.” "This is a disease, just like cancer,” Candie Dalton, who’s son suffers from schizophrenia, says. "It's just as devastating. But you don't get the support. You don't get people saying, 'Oh, your child is in the hospital. Can I come over with a casserole?" About 2 million people with mental illness go to jail every year, according to a 2013 study in Psychiatric Services in Advance. People have ignored the fact that there are people that have mental illnesses and we have definitely paid the price.

Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/05/12/mental-health-system-crisis/7746535/