SAMHSA Headquarters
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
1 Choke Cherry Road Rockville, MD 20857
SAMHSA Headquarters:
I am writing to you in regards to The Mental Health Parity. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 25% of American adults (those ages 18 and older) and about 13% of American children (those ages 8 to 15) are diagnosed with a mental illness during a given year. Mental health disorders account for four of the top 10 causes of disability in established market economies, such as the US, worldwide, and include: major depression (also called clinical depression), manic depression (also called bipolar disorder), schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. With that being said, millions of Americans with mental health disorders do not have adequate insurance protection against the costs of treatment for their mental disorders. With the rise on Mental Health I strongly feel that The Mental Health Parity needs to be firmly imposed from state to state.
According to an authoritative 2005 survey Americans will experience a major psychiatric or substance disorder at some point. For instance, the survey shown that only about 50 percent of Americans with a mood disorder had psychiatric treatment in the past year — leaving the rest at high risk of suicide. Approximately 90% of people with serious mental illnesses are unemployed. This means they do not have an employer-based health insurance plan. If they try to purchase their own insurance, they will find many barriers. * Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost earnings per year * Mood disorders such as depression are the third most common cause of hospitalization in the U.S. for both youth and adults ages 18 to 44 * Adults living with serious mental illness die on average 25 years earlier than other Americans, largely due to