Our Health Policy Matters

Why is mental illness the only chronic disease we don't begin to treat until Stage 4? I posed that question in a presentation for over 400 attendees at last week’s winter meeting of the North Carolina Hospital Association.  For an audience that witnesses first-hand the crowding of patients with mental illnesses into general hospital beds and emergency rooms, the question resonated. Stage 4 of a chronic disease is associated with the imminent threat of death – a widely metastasized cancer, for example, or kidney disease so advanced that only dialysis or a transplant keeps the person alive. The odds of recovery are long. It is the same with mental illness.  Either the patient's life or someone else's needs to be at stake before we guarantee access to treatment.  That's Stage 4. Diagnosing and treating a disease at Stage 1, 2, or 3, always improves the odds of survival and recovery. Why not apply that standard to mental illness, too?  In Stag...

Why is mental illness the only chronic disease we don't begin to treat until Stage 4? I posed that question in a presentation for over 400 attendees at last week’s winter meeting of the North Carolina Hospital Association.  For an audience that witnesses first-hand the crowding of patients with mental illnesses into general hospital beds and emergency rooms, the question resonated. Stage 4 of a chronic disease is associated with the imminent threat of death – a widely metastasized cancer, for example, or kidney disease so advanced that only dialysis or a transplant keeps the person alive. The odds of recovery are long. It is the same with mental illness.  Either the patient's life or someone else's needs to be at stake before we guarantee access to treatment.  That's Stage 4. Diagnosing and treating a disease at Stage 1, 2, or 3, always improves the odds of survival and recovery. Why not apply that standard to mental illness, too?  In Stag...