The U.S. government’s mental health system fails to provide necessary treatment to individuals with mental illnesses, a report released by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations said on Thursday.
The report, “Mental Health: HHS Leadership Needed to Coordinate Federal Efforts Related to Serious Mental Illness,” said eight federal agencies absorb billions of dollars in funding to run more than 100 mental health programs. Despite this, the report said the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has failed to promote coordination among the agencies, specifically in the area of serious mental illness.
“Agencies had difficulty identifying all programs supporting individuals with serious mental illness because they did not always track whether or not such individuals were among those served by the program,” the report said. “Agencies also varied in which programs they identified because they had different definitions of what such a program might be. Such inconsistency limits the potential comparability across programs.”
The report reviewed 112 federal programs from fiscal year 2013 available to individuals with serious mental illness.
“The federal government’s approach to addressing mental illness is a convoluted and disjointed mess,” U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), the subcommittee chairman, said. “Shame on us if we don’t take action and work on fixing the systemwide failures identified in this report so that we can focus resources on helping those in desperate need of medical services for treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and chronic depression.”
The subcommittee plans to meet Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST to review the report and discuss the need for stronger Health and Human Services leadership.