Ethical Dilemmas With Mental Health Care

History has shown a misunderstanding and fear of the unknown within society when it comes to people diagnosed with mental illnesses. There are many prejudices and stereotypes about mental illnesses and the group of people it affects, which can often result in keeping patients from being admitted into a hospital to receive the help they require and withholding treatment. The line and separation between the rights of a patient and the amount of control placed on a patient has become rather blurry. There is the idea that patients deserve the right to be free and working members of society, and there is the opposite idea that more control needs to be placed upon anyone diagnosed with a mental illness. The line needs to be more defined before the
But that shouldn’t mean putting their earnings before the needs of their patients. Patients with mental illnesses shouldn’t have to be worrying about how they are going to be paying for the services they need. When prices for medications, services, and hospitals is too expensive, many patients will be turned away. The ones who cannot receive treatment will not get better, and in result will be arrested or homeless due to their mental health declining. Mental health conditions are the, “costliest medical condition(s) in the country”(www.huffingtonpost.com), in front of cardiovascular diseases, trauma, and even cancer. These patients did not ask to be diagnosed with a disease. How can a company designed to help people charge so much for an unpreventable disorder? The high expenses makes it inaccessible to a majority of patients. Journalist Sy Mukherjee addresses this issue in an online article about patients being able to afford healthcare. She says, “Americans cannot afford the cost of their mental health treatment-even if they have insurance”(www.thinkprogress.org). Her statistics also show a stunning amount of patients not receiving treatment due to their cost. Out of the 45.6 million adults diagnosed with a mental disorder in 2011, 38.2 percent received treatment. That means 61.8 percent of mentally ill individuals did not receive any form of treatment(www.thinkprogress.org). The leading reason to the lack of treatment acquired was the overwhelming cost. Just over half of all patients who missed out on treatments reported that it was too expensive. After doing the math out, it is found that 28 million patients didn’t receive treatment. Cost was the issue for 14 million of those patients, and 2 million of those patients actually had insurance and it was still too expensive for them. Mentally ill patients have a lot of different treatments to pay for. Jordan Davidson says it best in her article about expenses,