The State of Mental Health Care

First, a disclaimer: This is only based on my own experiences and observations, although most of the people who work in mental health will probably agree with me. And this is not a reflection on my current or past employers, but about the whole mental health system in general.
This is what has been happening in my field of work in recent years. A patient gets admitted to a psychiatric unit today, gets discharged in a couple of weeks, then after a day or two, or a week or two later they are back in the psych unit for the same reason. Most of the time in the same hospital and sometimes in another hospital. So what went wrong? Was the patient not stabilized enough so he or she relapsed so quickly? More often than not, that is not the reason. Its because the system allows it. Mental health patients nowadays are usually covered by Medi-Cal or Medicare health insurance wherein the hospital is reimbursed by the state or the federal government. These patients are usually also collecting Social Security benefits due to being “permanently disabled”. I put those words under quotations because the mental disability of some of these people are highly questionable. The government has decided that they are disabled by one reason or another and its not up to the hospitals to decide if the government erred in making their decisions or not. Workers in mental health can plainly see that a lot of so called disabled patients are scamming the system. Patients go in and out of hospitals when they run out of money and basically use psych units as motels where they can live and eat for free until they get their next social security checks. Its more than just a coincidence that these people want to get discharged on or about the time they receive their social security checks.

To be continued...