The Need to Medicalize Mental Health Disease

When it's time to change behaviors,  there are basically two approaches: change your own thinking and hope this leads to new behavior, or change your behavior and hope this leads to new thinking. I add  ACT.

An epidemic occurs when an infectious disease rapidly spreads to many people.

• According to IMS Health, a healthcare information company, more than 129 million scripts for opioids were written in 2014 with sales of $8.85 billion.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) estimates that the market for addiction treatment is about $35 billion per year. 
• Every primary care doc in America spends at least 20 percent of their time dealing with the consequences of substance abuse.

Those numbers are staggering and the impact of one mental health patient's or one addict's treatment if  they have access to treatment and care on the financial health of their family and employer can be calamitous, let alone on the mental health of those same family members. 

The need to medicalize mental health and treatment is paramount if we're able to stop this epidemic which is touching all of us.  How can you be an agent for change whether you're a healthcare provider, heatlhcare stakeholder or healthcare consumer? ACT : #IAMStigmafree  

Chesapeake Physician - Your practice. Your life. November/December 2015

illustration credit: NAMI