Advancing health and health equity across the globe: Charité Mental Health Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin

First, financial investment needs an equity focus on areas with the greatest exposure to risk factors of mental illness and the least access to mental health services. The theme of the 2021 World Mental Health Day is “Mental Health in an Unequal World”, highlighting unequal access to mental health care across the world. There is much work to be done to address mental health inequities and to begin to close the gaps that we see in mental health care and outcomes for many populations. Leading up to my 2018 American Psychiatric Association (APA) presidency, it became clear that achieving the goal of mental health equity would require specific actions at a national level by leaders who made it a priority.

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• This study demonstrates the importance and feasibility of generating such an indicator to inform and empower communities, healthcare providers and policymakers to pursue equitable service provision.
• Third, policy makers and practitioners need to prioritise people with mental illness likely to experience severe lifelong consequences if they are not adequately supported during the COVID-19 response.
• Those who have successfully gone through the mental health treatment and recovery process—peer support specialists—can provide a network of understanding and empowerment for those with similar conditions.
• Originally, the Departments proposed to adopt a preamble to the MHPAEA statute that acts as a “fundamental purpose” statement to provide an overarching set of “guiding principles” for health plans and issuers to follow under the law.

This socioeconomic disparity is reported even in countries and regions with ‘universal’ healthcare, including Canada (Bartram and Stewart, 2019), Europe (Pinto-Meza et al., 2013) and Australia (Meadows et al., 2015; Pirkis et al., 2022). Key reasons given for this are treatment and quality of care gaps, with quality treatment not accessed by all who need it, especially people within lower socioeconomic groups or residing in deprived areas (Chandra and Chand, 2018; World Health Organization, 2014). Significant mental health disparities persist in screening, diagnosis, and treatment for racial and ethnic minorities compared with non-Latinx white people.

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Taken separately, any one of these improvements could justify the effort and investment necessary to achieve mental health equity. Data reveals an annual increase of 11.5% in mental health services for privately insured individuals from 2019 to 2022, which relates to a Cultural humility resources for professionals 15.4% annual increase in spending on mental health services among privately insured individuals within the same time period.24 Although mental health accounts for only about 5% of overall medical spending, this portion is increasing.25 By analyzing additional health care interactions, such as inpatient visits following an ED visit, the full scope of costs and health care utilization becomes visible, suggesting the true scope of the potential avoidable costs that result from inadequate and inequitable mental health care.

By employing culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS), providers can reduce disparities and advance health equity, including at points of behavioral health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic called widespread attention to existing disparities in health care access—a shift which, coupled with existing gaps in response to community behavioral health concerns, has helped foster bipartisan support for reforms to the behavioral health crisis response system. Dr. Owusu-Antwi is a dedicated PGY-3 resident and APA SAMHSA Minority Fellow with a strong commitment to advancing mental health care, advocacy, and health equity. Sheryl Kataoka, M.D., M.S.H.S., is a child psychiatrist and health services researcher who has focused her career on improving mental health care for youth and families living in under-resourced communities. Challenges related to mental health and accessing mental health services exacerbates power differentials and make social inclusion and equity even harder to achieve.

The final rules only state that a plan must correctly characterize items and services in these three categories in a way that is consistent based on the condition/disorder being treated and in a manner that is consistent with the general purpose of MHPAEA, which requires parity between the MH/SUD benefits and the M/S benefits under a health plan. Through these final rules, the Departments seek to provide more clearly defined standards to ensure that health plan sponsors, insurance carriers and other stakeholders do not apply more stringent limits on access to mental health (MH) and substance use disorder (SUD) benefits as compared to medical/surgical (M/S) benefits within a health plan or policy. Limited financial resources may prevent them from seeking help or accessing private mental health providers.

Ease of access encourages higher adoption rates that give employers more accurate insight into the ROI of high-quality mental health benefits. Equity in employee mental health access is important because it offers employees the ability to receive benefits that are inclusive, culturally centered, and easily accessible. Mental health care is not a one-size-fits-all service that applies to every individual in every circumstance. It will also support commissioners and service providers to evaluate and review their services, to measure the impact of changes and to identify areas for improvement.