Massachusetts passes a new children’s mental health law that tries to close the gap in care for children with mental health concerns and open up the screening process to more of them:
The bill requires pediatricians to routinely screen children for behavioral health problems, with parental consent, and for health insurance companies to cover those screenings. It creates a system for school personnel to receive consultation and guidance to recognize and better understand children’s’ mental health needs. And it attacks the “stuck kids” issue by setting up a process to more quickly move children stuck in hospitals because of bureaucratic red tape into more appropriate community-based settings.
I’m all for more mental health screenings (since I think many people walk around with sometimes serious mental disorders without even realizing it). Pediatricians are the professionals best equipped for such screenings, because if a child is already going in to see a psychiatrist or psychologist, then a mental health concern is already suspected.
I hope it also ensures pediatricians are paid for these screenings appropriately, since nothing is more effective as an incentive than being paid for one’s work.
Remarkably, this bill passed the Massachusetts legislature in a single session, virtually unheard of for a bill of this nature:
The substantial unmet need, combined with Torres’ powerful testimony and a strong coalition of families and organizations, helped push the bill through Beacon Hill in one legislative session, a remarkable feat, given its far-reaching effects, said Marylou Sudders, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and a former state mental health commissioner.
Which only goes to show you that, if nothing else, government can be extremely effective when it wants to be in the name of the children. It awaits the governor’s signature.
Read the full article: Children’s mental health bill wins final passage
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2 Comments to
“Children’s Mental Health Bill Passes in Massachusetts”
This is wonderful and would be even better if all states would practice this type of “getting down to business.” Children are indeed our most overlooked and underestimated population when it comes to mental illness or any type of mental disorder. We need to change the pace of our current time and I think perhaps legislation is coming to that realization. Maybe now we can truly make some progress in other areas of the world.
If you read what Philip Dawdy reports in today’s Furious Seasons site, this only will lead to pediatricians being marketed by Big Pharma to prescribe for kids too soon and too much. This is evil stuff going on here folks, and that is being said by a psychiatrist who started practicing just when managed care got going by forcing us out of the arena as therapists, making those of us eager to become psychopharmacologists to be the “Judas” to the satan of the pharmaceutical industry. The Decade of the Brain in the 90’s was the catchphrase for “let’s drug the crap out of society and make a sick profit off it”, and psychiatrists bought it.
Remember, 70% of antidepressant prescriptions are written by non-psychiatrists. Watch the numbers for “mood stabilizers”/antipsychotics in the next couple of years; does the public understand that primary care physicians/family practice docs/pediatricians have no true expertise in psychiatry and if they sell this quick fix mentality, will they be accountable WHEN they f–k it up!?
What a year 2008 is turning out to be to me.
therapyfirst (psychiatrist)
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 15 Aug 2008
