Psychiatric Cons

158-159). “In reviewing the literature, the focus was on identifying the impact of parental mental health, the associated risks, the difficulties with the interface working, and proposed solutions” (Duffy et al., 2010, p. 159). Some of concerns expressed for the program to be effective were how mental health and child care services work together, communication between the two, role clarity, and the outcome hoped to be achieved by the development of this program was to provide holistic interventions which could not be provided by just one agency, earlier intervention which was more effective, to decrease staff stress, and to obtain a better outcome for the families involved (Duffy et al.,

“Despite many calls for change, mental health care continues to be separate from the rest of health care. Difficulties in accessing mental health care have become a “de facto” in the US. Although screening for mental illness in primary care has increased in recent years, subsequent treatment remains inadequate and referral for specialty treatment continues to suffer from long delays. In the National Comorbidity Study, only 21.7% of individuals with major depressive disorder received adequate treatment (Grembowski, 2002).”

As a result of enacting the Affordable Care Act, insurance costs will increase because the government will offer universal healthcare. This requires an exorbitant amount of “new [medical] technology [which] will increase efficiency; the cost of new tests and treatments will outweigh the savings”, consuming millions of dollars (Whelan). Therefore the price of healthcare will increase in order to cover all these expenses needed to contribute to the nation’s overall health. Without the Affordable Care Act in effect, the current annual average expense of healthcare insurance is estimated to be around $5,600 per person, an increase compared to $4,255 in 2010 (Kaiser Family Foundation). After the recession that began in 2007, “the government expects that the growth of healthcare spending will outpace the expansion of the economy. By 2020, 1 of every 5 dollars spent in the U.S. is expected to go to healthcare” (Levey). This thus proves that as time passes the amount of healthcare is going to increase, but precise expenses cannot be predicted since it will be evident in the following years to come.

For example, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health report (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2012) affirms inconsistencies in pediatric mental health utilization and highlights the need for focused research in this area. The American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Mental Health has recognized the underutilization of pediatric mental health care. The task force outlines the important role pediatric primary care settings play in childhood mental health and have developed a systematic plan to improve the pediatric role in mental health (Foy, 2010). Although increasing access to care is a general focus, researchers must have a better understanding of the phenomena of help seeking in order to better tailor interventions targeting increased utilization of mental health services.

Access to mental health care is not as good as than other forms of medical services. Some Americans have reduced access to mental health care amenities because they are living in a countryside setting. Others cannot get to treatment for the reason of shortage of transportation or vast work and household tasks. In some areas, when a

Even with a decrease in the cost and more efficient medical equipment, health care costs are rising. The expectation today

First, no cases opened for children mental health case management where the parents and/or guardians were contacted via letter. Therefore, it is evident that phone contact has the most significant impact on whether parents and/or guardians will receive mental health case management services for their child. Another trend is that the referrals that were received from law enforcement or child protection had a zero percent chance of opening for children’s mental health case management. This was not surprising, as most families that may have child protection or law enforcement involvement typically do not want the county to intervene in their lives. Lastly, referrals that came from the parents and/ or guardians themselves had over a fifty percent chance of opening for children’s mental health case management. Again, this was not surprising because if the parents are contacting the county, they typically want these services in place for their child. Overall, these were the results of my research. Additionally, there are some apparent trends that are evident by completing this research

Especially since every situation is different and everyone's mental illness affects them in different ways. On the American Psychiatric Association, they state that mental illness is just like any other disease such as a heart disease or diabetes. The problem with a mental illness, though, is that it's not concrete like other illnesses. For most mental illnesses, you can't get lab work done that shows you have a mental illness or not.

Mental health might be considered one of the most disadvantaged sectors of our present healthcare structure. In many communities, especially rural and remote communities, mental health resources are often thinly stretched and there are fewer people entering in to mental health specialities (Hutten-Czapski 2001, Pawlenko 2005, Craven & Bland 2006, Mulvale & Bourgeault 2007).

When children are first conceived, society holds the expectation that each parent be in an average mental state so as to care for the infant, as they have many needs and require lots of care. Further, in a perfect world, this mental homeostasis would be maintained as the infant grows into childhood and continues into adolescence in order to best carry out their parental responsibilities. A parent has the duty to remain stable mentally and physically in order to sustain and enrich another life. However, this is most certainly not the case for every family. Many children grow up with one or more parents who at some point suffer from mental illness. This causes implications on the child’s development. These implications can include mental, physical, and social problems. This raises the question: will these children behave differently in a social setting than their peers? How might their home-life affect their conformity?

The stigmas surrounding mental health create a barrier not only for the treatment of the parents suffering from these disorders but also for their children. For parents, a staggering 2/3 of the population suffering from mental illnesses, admitting that they cannot care for themselves and their children can be extremely difficult and thus their children suffer. It is said that 30-50 percent of children with mentally ill parents will have a psychiatric diagnosis in comparison to 20 percent of the general population. Many times, even when parents do choose treatment information about their children is rarely

In 2010 Tally Moses released a paper exploring the amount of self-blame parent’s felt towards their children who had been diagnosed with various mental disorders. He defined self-blame as “holding themselves responsible for causing, contributing to, or exacerbating their child’s mental disorders with wrongdoings…”(Moses, 2010). By analyzing self-blame, mental health clinicians have the capacity to minimize blame within a familial system and facilitate support structures which assist families with integration into the surrounding community. Moses hypothesized that parents who report higher levels of depression and caregiver burden as well as low levels of hope will report more self-blame and that lower perceptions of stigma coupled with greater social support may be associated with less self-blame in parents. In addition to these hypotheses, the study looked at the factors associated with increased levels of parental self-blame such as public stigma, biology/genetics, parents’ psychological well-being, parent demographic characteristics, and adolescents clinical characteristics. The study consisted of sixty-eight parents, biological and non-biological, of adolescents aged twelve to eighteen that had been diagnosed with one or more nonspecific mental disorders. The families were clients of a mental health program which provides case management to patients with functional impairments with the potential to be placed in more restrictive placements. The service acted

Moretti and Obsuth (2009) recommended that “the connection program may serve as an effective component of a large treatment package” (p.1356). The author implied that further treatments on children and adolescents were definitely needed because they were the people who had mental illness, not their parents. Both articles indicated that poor parenting methods such as threat, denunciation, and even physical maltreatments were one major reason to cause children’s mental problems. However, the Connect program never indicated that parents with these inappropriate behaviors could also be the patients of mental disorders. It was absolutely necessary to employ more treatments on children and adolescents if their conditions were extremely severe, as the authors advocated. However, it was also important to realize that some parents also needed to be treated in a serious way, because their brutal parenting styles were unlikely to be eliminated completely with few intervention

Participants in the study were sampled from several mental health outpatient clinics. The community mental health centers were considered a specialty level of care and are located in both urban and rural settings. The patients at the centers are typically referred by primary care provider, emergency department or after an inpatient hospitalization for outpatient mental health treatment and follow-up.

Reflecting on Data Analysis for Psychology helped me understand and got me thinking about my dissertation. I did have some sort of an idea of what I wanted to conduct my dissertation research on and I have come to an understanding that I would like to conduct a research with parents of children who are diagnosed with mental health illness and disorders. I would like to know from the research what kind of services, if any, are out there to support parents as it must be overwhelming for these parents to take care of their children and to also hold on to their jobs, homes, other children, family and friends. How do these parents deal with their own depression and anxiety while caring for the diagnosed children? There is very little research on marriages falling apart, families breaking down, and parents having to downsize as they either lose their jobs or go part-time, and other siblings in the family suffer.