Tonight, countless acute mental-health patients desperate for help will arrive at their local emergency room only to be detained under guard for days as they wait for suitable psychiatric care. It’s a crisis of health-care delivery that, at a minimum, would benefit from the leadership of a national task force to develop solutions for a problem caused by poor funding for community care.
The issue of mental-health patients being “boarded” in emergencies rooms, whether they arrive there themselves or are brought by police unable to handle a mental-health crisis, is endemic. It’s an economic imperative to solve this problem because it wastes resources and, since behavioral treatment has better outcomes the sooner it begins, it’s also a moral one.
This comes at a time when we lament the prevalence of mass shootings and a rising number of suicides throughout the United States; removing barriers to decent treatment of anyone in a mental-health crisis should be a top priority.
Today, vulnerable patients and their families suffer needless stress awaiting proper medical treatment in emergency room settings, where staffs aren’t trained in providing help for mental-health patients. Typically, staffs put these patients under guard, often in a small exam space where they are confined until a bed becomes available at a mental-health facility. They aren’t provided any therapeutic care — and treatment doesn’t begin until they’re placed elsewhere.
[For more of this story, written by Tony Colarossi, go to http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...ency-room-2016-07-19]
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