Children who go to a Wellesley pediatrician can, if needed, see a psychologist in a nearby exam room. At a medical office in Peabody, boys and girls with anxiety issues can simply go upstairs to see a social worker. And at a Newton pediatric clinic, children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder are able to see an on-site nurse practitioner specializing in mental health.
These are among a growing number of Massachusetts pediatric practices that are sharing space with mental health professionals, a move aimed at improving access to hard-to-obtain psychological services and at sending the message that treating children’s depression and behavioral issues is as important as following their asthma and diabetes.
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And the Nurse Practitioner specializing in "mental health" gives them drugs. This improvement, brought to us by big pharma, does not signal greater access to to care, merely greater profits for pharmaceutical companies. Treating depression and behavioral issues has become a profit center and children are receiving a clear message that whatever the problems may be in their lives, all they need to do in to take a drug. That message will follow them throughout their lives, leading to even greater profits and the enormous explosion we are seeing in prescription drug abuse. Families are devastated, lives are ruined and precious children are dying, and now the children are getting drugs right in the pediatrician's office.
I knew from the time my child was three that something was off, but the prevaling attitude was to 'not treat.' Twenty years later I have a schizo-affected bipolar child who refuses medication and therapy, save for self-medication in the form alcohol and cannabis, among others. Congrats on your success in keeping 'drugs' out of children.
CHILD-ADVOCATE overstates the situation. No one doubts the Big Pharma problems: marketing, profits, inaccurate effects, and over-medication by many practitioners, but let's not fall into the Scientology BS of saying that all meds are "drugs" in the worst sense of the word and psychiatry is junk. It is admirable that mental health issues are now recognized and treated with therapy and other interventions besides medication, but meds are a very important part of affected people's lives. When they work, and they work the large majority of the time, the results range from good to spectacular. What is not generally considered is the type of medication, the dose, the side effects, patient compliance and a host of other factors all complicated by medication's inherent weaknesses: they all act differently at different doses in different people, they take time to act fully and they take time to remove from the body. So med therapy remains a trial and error over the long term in many cases. This is something everyone involves works around. When the right one is found, patients are better off and more inclined to accept other types of non-drug treatment because of their mental change (and I'm not talking about making them into zombies a la Hollwyood mental ward depictions.) All in all, the article is an indication of better care at an early age.
This is a great model for providing quick access for children who otherwise may not get seen. However as the article points out the insurance industry once again is a block using an outdated model for reimbursement. Early intervention is often the best medicne.
Sadly, the models used by insurance carriers to make coverage more difficult are not outdated. They are relatively recent iterations which have a very specific effect of decreasing the industry's outflow of cash into mental heath. Prior to managed care, in the eighties, mental health was include as a basic part of all policies. At that time Massachusetts had a $500/person/year benefit mandate. The law changed, with the intent of creating parity or equity between mental health and physical health. Carriers saw their liabilities going up, so they have been creating escape hatches for themselves ever since. It is easy for a reasonable person to understand that carriers have to have some limits on mental health expenses. Unfortunately, the strategies have been used to such an excess that the entire structure of mental health treatment in the country has been thoroughly devastated. And the tactics that have been implemented have range from being inconvenient and disingenuous to immoral and unethical.
Good luck with your "mack daddy" health insurance company coveriong behavioural health.