Mental Health Parity discussion in the NYT

Posted on March 31, 2008 by bipolarlawyercook| 7 Comments

A detailed review of the Men­tal Health Par­ity move­ment, and the push to make health insur­ers cover men­tal ill­ness on par with phys­i­cal ill­ness.  No ques­tion where I fall on the larger ques­tion, but I’d be inter­ested in review­ing any sci­en­tific dis­cus­sion about the ways to show/prove/test for the exis­tence of hormonal/biochemical men­tal ill­nesses such as “mere” anx­i­ety and depres­sion– which respond to med­ica­tion, but which cur­rently aren’t tested for in the blood­stream, or detectable (like bipo­lar, for exam­ple) on MRI or EEG.

This entry was posted in bipolar, links, medicine, politics, science. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Mental Health Parity discussion in the NYT

  1. Michelle | March 31, 2008 at 5:37 pm |

    If there is stuff out there on this topic that would be fas­ci­nat­ing. I think part of the rea­son it is not cov­ered on par with phys­i­cal ill­nesses is that the diag­no­sis is still viewed as very “sub­jec­tive”. I have gone to many dif­fer­ent psy­chi­a­trists over the years and I have been diag­nosed (and treated) for every­thing from Post Trau­matic Stress Syn­drome to Bipo­lar dis­or­der with the gen­eral con­sen­sus being Gen­er­al­ized Anx­i­ety Dis­or­der and Mod­er­ate Recur­ring Depres­sion. If there were a way to SEE these ill­nesses man that would be fan­tas­tic. I am tak­ing a class this sum­mer and was think­ing of writ­ing a paper on a sim­i­lar topic.

    As always — thanks for the post!

  2. mad madge | March 31, 2008 at 9:24 pm |

    Thanks for this post. I have always dealt with anx­i­ety and mod­er­ate recur­ring depres­sion. I’ve been in ther­apy. I’ve been on lexapro — which was great.

    if I stay on top of things — jour­nal, exer­cise, do yoga, do cre­ative things, etc. it’s man­age­able. but that’s a lot to keep up when you have a job and two kids.

    my insur­ance not cov­er­ing ther­apy has been a big rea­son why i haven’t gone back.

  3. Sara | April 1, 2008 at 3:13 am |

    You can test doing a thing called the dex­am­etha­sone sup­pres­sion test…but the thing is, it can be up in a lot of dis­or­ders, so if you get a pos­i­tive result (which depres­sion gives), you have to investigate…so no one does it. It is kind of com­pli­cated and expen­sive and doesn’t really con­tribute much.

  4. my sad alter ego | April 1, 2008 at 4:40 am |

    I can’t believe they still present this as if there is a ques­tion as to whether or not men­tal ill­ness is “real.” Espe­cially when world­wide, men­tal ill­nesses are some of the most expen­sive and dis­abling that there are. “…a prob­lem, even a choice…”

    This arti­cle just made me furious.

  5. Prof. J. | April 1, 2008 at 6:27 am |

    I once had a sleep test to test for sleep apnea. I did not have apnea, but the doc­tor informed me that my sleep pat­tern indi­cated depres­sion. Well, duh! But I was sur­prised to learn you could diag­nose depres­sion from sleep patterns.

    Evi­dently, your sleep is back­wards when you are depressed–you dream at the begin­ning of your sleep cycle (if at all).

  6. Emily | April 1, 2008 at 8:21 am |

    Authors: Caspi A; Sug­den K; Mof­fitt TE; Tay­lor A; Craig IW; Har­ring­ton H; McClay J; Mill J; Mar­tin J; Braith­waite A; Poul­ton R

    Arti­cle title: Influ­ence of life stress on depres­sion: mod­er­a­tion by a poly­mor­phism in the 5-HTT gene.

    Jour­nal: [Sci­ence] 2003 Jul 18; Vol. 301 (5631), pp. 386–9

    Abstract: In a prospective-longitudinal study of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive birth cohort, we tested why stress­ful expe­ri­ences lead to depres­sion in some peo­ple but not in oth­ers. A func­tional poly­mor­phism in the pro­moter region of the sero­tonin trans­porter (5-HT T) gene was found to mod­er­ate the influ­ence of stress­ful life events on depres­sion. Indi­vid­u­als with one or two copies of the short allele of the 5-HT T pro­moter poly­mor­phism exhib­ited more depres­sive symp­toms, diag­nos­able depres­sion, and sui­ci­dal­ity in rela­tion to stress­ful life events than indi­vid­u­als homozy­gous for the long allele. This epi­demi­o­log­i­cal study thus pro­vides evi­dence of a gene-by-environment inter­ac­tion, in which an individual’s response to envi­ron­men­tal insults is mod­er­ated by his or her genetic makeup.

    Ta da!

  7. Gloria, Writer Reading | April 1, 2008 at 4:11 pm |

    A diag­no­sis in the DSM — psychiatry’s diag­nos­tic and sta­tis­ti­cal man­ual– should be enough. There are plenty of med­ical con­di­tions that are symp­tom based, with­out any med­ical tests as “proof.” Irri­ta­ble bowel syn­drome for one. Also, if it requires med­ica­tion, that should clearly be cov­ered. Any ther­apy that is con­sid­ered a “med­ical neces­sity” should be cov­ered, which basi­cally amounts to the per­son still have symp­toms listed in the DSM.

Leave a Reply