What's Could Finally End the U.S. Mental Health Crisis

"The consequences of these failures are staggering. Primary care and other medical doctors, untrained in mental health, wrote most of the opioid prescriptions that fueled more than 200,000 overdose deaths in the opioid epidemic. 3 Of 48,000 suicides per year, 40-45 percent of the patients see their medical doctor in the 2-4 weeks beforehand-potentially preventable suicides if doctors were universally and appropriately trained. 4,5"

"First, the system must produce more psychiatrists. 1 Second, medical education must prepare primary care physicians-who provide 75 percent of all mental health care-to recognize and manage psychiatric illness. 2 Neither has happened. And almost no one pressed for what, in my opinion, is a key third fix: weaving psychology and other mental health professionals into the very fabric of medicine."

"Two forces stand in the way of real, systemic change in the field. The first barrier is intellectual. Modern medicine grew out of the 16th- and 17th-century Scientific Revolution, which drew a sharp line between body and mind, today called the "mind-body split." 6 This model focused exclusively on physical disease and left the care of mental and social problems to the church or community."

The U.S. mental health care crisis continues to worsen. The system failed to produce enough psychiatrists and failed to prepare primary care physicians, who provide 75 percent of mental health care, to recognize and manage psychiatric illness. Psychology and other mental health professionals remain insufficiently integrated into medicine. Primary care physicians untrained in mental health wrote many opioid prescriptions that fueled over 200,000 overdose deaths and saw many patients who later died by suicide, indicating missed prevention opportunities. Misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatments worsen depression, anxiety, and substance use, producing social harms. Intellectual and profit-driven barriers have prevented systemic change, leaving reform dependent on public pressure.

Read at Psychology Today