Identifying individuals with serious mental illness early, keeping them out of emergency rooms and jails, and increasing their access to quality care formed the basis of the recommendations of a new committee charged with improving mental health care across the country in a report released Thursday.
"I can tell you as a physician who's worked in the system for many, many years, that the emergency room is not a place for people that are experiencing exacerbations of mental health conditions," said Elinore McCance-Katz, MD, PhD, assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and chair of the committee that authored the report.
The solution, she said, is a "national system of crisis intervention services."
"We need a continuum of care with outpatient services as alternatives to inpatient care ... because we don't have enough beds in this country to accommodate people with serious mental illness."
And if the right system, one that included community interventions and adequate resources, were in place, "we might not need so many beds," she added.