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The Role Of Discrimination In Psychiatric Hospitals

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The hospital says “You're not sick enough,'" says Myrick, former president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness "I said, 'What do you mean I'm not sick enough? I'm trying not to get sick.” The hospital, yet again refuses and declines yet another patient with mental illness. If it was cancer, the hospital would accept the patient with wide arms and procedures to remove the tumor would begin. If it was a broken leg, the hospital would wheel out a stretcher and begin to asses the situation. However, the hospital refused to serve a person with mental illness. Why is this happening, in a hospital of all places?
"Mental health is a separate but unequal system," says Patrick Kennedy, a former rhode island congressmen, "We have a wasteland of people who have died and been disabled because of inadequate care." The discrimination has extended its arms everywhere, even insurance, hospitals, the workforce and the government. …show more content…

About half a century ago, congress created the medicaid law, which stated that states that funds must be used for physical conditions, but is not required to treat mental conditions. The conditions for treatment worsened in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Medicaid began paying for psychiatric hospitalizations for patients under 21. In the 1980s, it began paying for psychiatric hospitals with fewer than 16 beds. “People were operating under the belief that mental health was a black hole for money," says Ron Manderscheid, executive director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health & Disability Development

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