The Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership is made up of 14 organizations representing the majority of mental health and substance abusers, consumers, their families, and their allies in Georgia., Jeff Breedlove of the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse said:
The 2022 Unified Vision to Transform Mental Health and Substance Use Care in Georgia is part of a multi-year legislative process. Last year, Unified Vision called for better access to mental health care as the state grapples with the effects of her COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, Georgia has climbed from absolute bottom to 48th for access to mental health care.
more: Georgia is improving its mental health assessment based on data collected before COVID.but challenges remain
Attention from groups associated with behavioral health advocacy, as well as legislators, including State House Speaker David Ralston, has led to the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act.
Proponents are now seeking more funding to expand the program that has proven effective.
“We need to focus on peer-led recovery-based programs,” Breedlove said. “House Bill 1013 was the beginning, not the end. There is still work to be done with Parity to ensure that we are in place, continue to build a peer-led workforce, and make sure we do more to address the crisis and response to emergencies.”
Georgia’s largest mental health service provider is its criminal justice system. State Rep. Greg Kennard (D-Lawrenceville) said last year that county jails and prisons were full of people who were not given adequate access to mental health care.
“You can make the argument that we’re criminalizing mental health,” he said.
According to Breedlove, the lack of funding means that many rural areas of Georgia can’t even afford to participate in a pilot program for responders.
The Georgia Council on Substance Abuse aims to work with the state to expand programs for recovery community organizations.
These organizations organize recovery-focused policy advocacy efforts, conduct recovery-focused community education and outreach programs, and provide peer-based recovery support services.
“Georgia has 40, but 40 isn’t enough to serve 159 counties,” says Breedlove.
According to Unified Vision, about 49% of high school students in Georgia reported feeling very anxious, 40% reported feeling depressed, and 11% reported intentionally hurting themselves during the last year.
Peter Nunn, board member of the Georgia chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, describes three fundamental elements of a unified vision:
- Early detection and prevention
- Labor force
- parity
For each of these three factors, an inadequate provider network is the main problem, Nunn said. An insurer’s provider network is an important intermediary step between coverage and access to care, but many insurers seek to reduce the number of behavioral health providers across the board to justify inadequate networks. , said Nan.
Related: With few other resources, people with behavioral health problems are being treated in jails and prisons
“But the action is nothing more than a verbal sleight of hand used by insurers to divert attention from what appears to be a willful violation of their network adequacy obligations,” Nunn said. citing actuarial firm research, found that children in Georgia were more than 10 times more likely to be forced out of the network for behavioral health care. Than being forced to go off-network for general medical care.
According to Nan, it’s because the network of insurers is inadequate. A behavioral health provider for children in Georgia.
“We will be asking states to expand existing programs for mental health and addiction services that we know are already working,” Breedlove said.
This article is brought to Reporter Newspapers / Atlanta Intown through our reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.
