The Mental Health Care System of My Dreams
The mental health care system of my dreams would take into consideration three facts the current system does not:
- Mental health diagnoses change over time and mental illnesses are chronic in nature
- Mental health care workers can only do their jobs when the care is voluntary, in other words when the patients want the care being offered
- Most mental health concerns are best managed WITHOUT medication
- Mental health care to complex patients requires a multi-disciplinary team approach (e.g. social worker, occupational therapist, recreational therapist, psychologist), +/- a psychiatrist.
The mental health care system of my dreams would remove involuntary patient care from psychiatric practice and create a separate non-medical team to manage this with the psychiatrist as a consultant.
The mental health care system of my dreams would have different hospital/inpatient and outpatient/community services dedicated to patients with severe addictions, patients with severe personality pathology, and geriatric patients with dementia to protect our emergency rooms and acute care hospitals.
The mental health care system of my dreams would train psychiatrists in the management of a range of psychiatric disorders using both medication and non-medication approaches outside of an acute care setting.
The mental health care system of my dreams would provide most of its mental health care in community health multi-disciplinary clinics rather than the emergency room. The mental health care system of my dreams would recognize how inadequate, insufficient and inappropriate the emergency room is in providing mental health care, and yet this is where people are told to go. The mental health care system of my dreams would not teach its patients they need to be in crisis to be worthy of help.
The mental health care system of my dreams would no longer pour a disproportionate amount of our limited resources in those least likely to benefit, so that those we can help are not deteriorating until they too are in crisis.
The mental health care system of my dreams would value and aim to enhance the quality of life lived more than the act and mechanics of being alive.
The mental health care system of my dreams would help sit with, contain and process life's challenges and inevitabilities rather than avoid, medicate and defer them to a non-existent other.