Just downloaded the White House National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness (198 pages). It lays 7 goals out in detail. To date, 24 million Americans have contracted COVID and over 400,000 have died. Hopefully this will be a time-limited health crisis.
Right now, between 11-13 million Americans (and by extension 11-13 million families, maybe 44 million more Americans) suffer from the ramifications of SMI each year. This crisis isn't time-limited.
The country is being crushed with multiple crises, but our on-going SMI crisis needs to be added to the crises requiring immediate attention -- a National Plan. It's way past time to ask for a National Plan.
From Tomorrow Was Yesterday: “As it stands today, the US mental health/illness system is filled with political landmines and gut-wrenching divisions: parents vs. children, peer organizations vs. family organizations, voluntary vs. involuntary treatment concepts, psychiatrist vs. psychologist turf wars, state vs. federal jurisdictions, HIPAA restrictions vs. parental rights, lack of beds vs. incarceration, unions vs. providers, psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry, civil rights vs. dying with your rights on, NIMBYism vs. housing, traditional medicine vs. holistic medicine, and funded advocacy organizations vs. unfunded grassroots advocacy efforts. I watched my son Pat die because the system is tied up in bureaucratic and philosophical knots."
There will never be a better time than now to ask for what we need and deserve. How can we make this request?
