Treatment Overhadowing

These studies suggest that people with mental illness suffer from disparities during the diagnosis process, but the issue of treatment needs to be considered as well. Treatment overshadowing is defined as possible biases present during the making of treatment decisions. This includes all aspects of a treatment plan that can be overlooked, including a physician’s unwillingness to address any barriers that may affect the patient’s care. Treatment overshadowing is a crucial factor in patient care because it occurs when physician’s do not have enough knowledge of the mental illness, experience discomfort in dealing with patients with SMI, and overall, negatively impact the treatment process. Due to the economic pressures, the system of health care
This can help ensure early detection of physical illness and treatment can be more effective. This long-term management strategy can help improve global outcomes in schizophrenia. Guidelines published by the UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommend primary care doctors/secondary care providers to provide routine physical checks for individuals who have SMI/schizophrenia (Pack, 2008). However, this is not enough if the primary and secondary health care providers do not know what their position entails or includes, thus leading to lack of medical record keeping. Furthermore, The Equality Act 2010 enforces health services to bear legal responsibility to adjust health procedures to ensure patients with SMI are not a disadvantage (Moore et al.,
Along with experiencing disparities with receiving physical health treatment, schizophrenic minorities are less likely to receive needed mental health services (Carpenter-Song et al., 2009). Even if these minorities received mental health care, it is often of poorer quality. There is strong evidence that individuals with a diagnosis of mental illness feel a sense of disrespect from health care professionals, examples include; speaking to the patient in a derogatory manner, not fully explaining the treatment and blaming the patient for their condition (Thornicroft et al., 2007).Through implementation of systematic monitoring processes and collaborative health care interventions at the onset of illness, mental health providers can gain knowledge about ways to improve both physical and mental health of this patient population. It is also important for primary care providers to educate themselves and to be aware of physical symptoms associated with mental illness like schizophrenia. Having sufficient knowledge and education about a mental illness can prevent diagnostic overshadowing/treatment from occurring. Further research should be conducted to gain a better understanding of the specific health care needs of SMI individuals as well as provide improved/easily accessible