Link – After daughter’s suicide, grieving parents denounce gaps in access to mental health care

This story is an example of a whole bunch of things that are lacking.

Was it the insurance company’s inability to provide more intense treatment options at fault? Was the lack of providers to provide that treatment without long wait times? Was it the 55% of mental health providers who’ve given up on dealing with insurance and don’t accept it any longer?

Yes. It’s all of those, and more.

And this is the story of a fairly well-to-do family that actually had resources to pay for some of the options themselves, if they could get in. How much worse is it for the vast majority of people who don’t have those resources?

Solving this is going to require a lot of really hard work, difficult conversations, and tough choices. Are we up for it?

So far, the answer has been no, in no short part because we don’t want to deal with “those people” and their mental health issues. That has to change too, maybe before we can even start to have those difficult conversations.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/After-daughter-s-suicide-Santa-Rosa-parents-13676515.php