People Deserve Quality Inpatient Mental Health Care
As a psychologist, I have the occassional responsibility of referring clients for both short-term inpatient mental health care or long-term treatment. State hospitals have largely gone under across the nation. For long-term treatment we often have only the options of private agencies. Most of these facilities do take some form of insurance; however, citizens are facing the problem of not having mental health benefits for residential treatment at a time when they need it the most.
On the short-term end of mental health treatment, the inpatient crisis care our citizens are receiving is in many cases grossly deficient. Care may vary across facilities or regions, but people have little choice in where they go for crisis treatment. We need more options and better quality care for inpatient mental health.