Mental Health Issue and the Presidential Race?

Question

What you like the presidential candidates to address regarding Mental Health. Given recent events in the news, Mental Health needs to get addressed and as a separate issue from discussion on health care.

Someone thinks Hillary has all the answers.
What would you like your candidate to come out saying in regards to mental health issue in this country.

Answer 1

i would like to see Hillary on some stronger psychotropic drugs, she seems to be coming apart at the seams.

Answer 2

Mental health finds a lot of its issues with managed care. Minimizing the costs of "fixing people" mentally is a very presumptuous thing. It means that people are expected to find relief in their symptoms within whatever window is alotted to therapists and psychiatrists to provide it (usually 20 sessions a year).

Oh, and don't get me started on psychiatry. The financial incentives at work there are monumental. People's disorders are being neglected for just sedating the symptoms away from people, while fostering a reliance on the chemicals and not giving enough time to change the behaviors or causal mechanisms that lead to the disorder in the first place.

Many more issues need to be directly examined. Making people emotionally and mentally healthy is not a little procedure. It's a continuous process that sometimes requires many more resources than the government, or insurance companies, would ever be willing to accept or admit.

Mental health is very different from physical health, but needs the topics should also be considered as connected elements in overall health. I would first like a candidate to be able to articulate this, and then I would like a candidate to suggest ways in which mental health services can avoid being dragged through the mud by the ever-diminishing dollar.

Answer 3

All presidential candidates should get a physical and mental health screening, as well as a credit check, resume check, and drug and alcohol screen. Why should a person we are considering to run the country have less investigation than someone who is going to run the cash register at Sear's?

If we had this, Bush would never have passed the drug and mental health screens and Cheney wouldn't have passed the alcohol and physical health screens.

Mental health? Get off the couch and take a walk, stop eating all of that high fructose corn syrup and get a good night's sleep and half of the depression will go away.

Answer 4

Mental health has been reduced to medication. And no real facilities to help. There is no such thing as actual therapy. They put the mentally ill in jail which is no help. It is underfunded. It is not taken seriously as an actual health issue. Oh and you can thank Ronald Reagan for this!. I have yet to establish any of the candidates as my own. Can't trust Hillary on this issue as her healthcare reform is backed by pharmaceuticals.

Answer 5

I would like for my candidate to come out and continue what Tipper Gore started during the Clinton administration as well as mental health issues were at the forefront in the Kennedy adminstration. I would like my candidate to say that it will be brought back to the forefront as a real medical issue which Republicans seem not to believe. I think Hillary would do very well with it as she was willing to try and talk to the hostage taker because she knew he was mentally ill. However, the police wouldn't allow her to do it. I think she cares so much about it that she could have pulled it off. I think he would have come out much quicker with her. That's how much confidence I have in her compassion. After all, that's what Eisenberg wanted to talk to her about, getting help, so looks as if he felt she was the one who would get it for him.

Answer 6

I actually work in mental health. We don't "fix" people - we help them find ways to cope with their illness and control it so the illness doesn't control them.

I think the government needs to pump more money into mental health system. In our state, there are alot of counties that are almost bankrupt and have to cut services because there just isn't money. Which is bad, because then, the mentally ill can't get help and they end up committed in a hospital which can cost the county $3,000 in one shot - when it would have only cost about $1000/yr to help them.

Answer 7

I'd like the candidates to explain what they understand about mental health, and if they see it worth more funding or not and why. Many states have taken funding cuts recently and I'd like to understand how they think that is good for society.