Link – Nationwide study reveals just how broken the US mental health system is
It’s bad, and it’s getting worse. When will we realize how much this contributes to many of the other societal problems that we have with addiction and suicide and turn this around?
The survey spanned eight years and involved more than 200,000 people living in the US aged between 18 and 64. It concluded that 3.4 percent of the population now suffer from what researchers call ‘severe psychological distress’ (SPD) – mental health issues so serious that they affect someone’s physical wellbeing.
Extrapolated, that suggests more than 8.3 million adult Americans suffer from mental health issues, far higher than researchers had previously assumed.
And yet the study also found that access to mental health care services actually deteriorated between 2006 and 2014 for people suffering from SPD, when compared to those who didn’t report mental distress. In other words, the gap is getting bigger.
