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Posted By Jerome Yoman on 06/19/2018

Plans for Treating Mental Illness Should Encourage Family Involvement

By Christeine Terry and Jerome Yoman

Health care reform is coming, and how it is delivered to Oregonians with the Oregon Health Plan will change. The recent agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and state of Oregon will improve our community mental health system; however, we believe it is also time we address an often underemphasized area of health care: the role of families.

Specifically, we need more services for families who have loved ones with persistent mental illness. In this time of economic hardship, some may question the value of spending money on additional services. We disagree. Numerous scientific studies demonstrate how money spent on helping family members of people with serious mental illness actually saves money in the long run.

There are effective treatments for people with serious mental illness and their family members that improve the lives of everyone involved. The impact of these treatments with schizophrenia, for example, is second only to medication. Teaching family members how to better communicate, for instance, has been shown to substantially improve the functioning of people with schizophrenia. Similarly, teaching family members how to non-confrontationally coax their loved ones into addictions treatment has been shown to work in approximately 70 percent of these situations.


How does this affect society as a whole? Treating mental illness costs billions of dollars every year. In 2006, these costs were second only to the cost of treating cancer. We can assume the costs of mental illness will continue to rise. Because family therapies can help decrease symptoms and prevent relapses, they will reduce the economic burden of mental illness. For example, the use of family therapies can decrease the use of more costly treatments such as inpatient hospitalization, which can cost thousands of dollars each day.

As a society, we encourage preventive care through vaccines and regular checkups for illnesses that can be very costly if left untreated. Therapies that teach family members skills to aid their loved one's recovery are powerful forms of preventive care that can actually decrease expenditures down the road.

There are support groups, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness' Family-to-Family Program, that offer resources and support to family members, but often this is not enough. Family members deserve choices in specialized services to address their needs and help them learn to more effectively support their loved ones and themselves.

These treatments exist, but they remain underused, in part because reimbursement from insurance companies can be difficult. If you have a loved one with a serious mental illness, you know how devastating the effects of untreated problems can be. Even if you do not have a loved one with mental illness, the societal burden for untreated mental illness can be enormous.

More services for families will ultimately decrease costs associated with mental illness. More important, the quality of life for all people touched by mental illness can be improved with the provision of effective family treatments. 


Published in The Oregonian, April 10, 2012


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