Sovereign Health Launches Second Installment of Groundbreaking, Six-Part Series on the War on Behavioral Health Care

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., July 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sovereign Health, a leading national behavioral health treatment system, has launched a groundbreaking editorial series, "The War on Behavioral Health Care." This six-part series explores the barriers that prevent people from receiving life-saving treatment for mental illness and addiction. Confluences of social, financial, legal and systemic factors stand between those desperate for help, fueling the addiction and mental health crises in America. At a time when Americans are dying in record numbers from suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related illness and accidents, psychiatric beds are unavailable or remain empty.

The second installment, "The War on Behavioral Health Care: Part 2. Financial Feuds," launches today and discusses how the current health care system prolongs human suffering and endangers lives by putting profits before people.

The crisis of addiction not only destroys people, it destroys families, communities, nations and cultures. Opioid overdose rates continue to increase exponentially as drug addiction ravages the United States. Only about one in ten people who reportedly need addiction treatment ever receive care. There are many reasons for this shocking discrepancy, many of which are financial in nature. The high costs of staffing and running a facility, little or no reimbursement from insurance companies, and state budget cuts all combine to result in a war on mental health and addiction treatment.

Insurance companies are making mental health and substance use treatment progressively less accessible than treatment for other conditions through stealthy means, including the following:

• Use of requirements that allow insurance companies to decide who gets what level of care (e.g. residential care only after outpatient care fails) 
• Excessively frequent utilization reviews that bog down providers' resources
• Stricter medical requirements that limit coverage of certain treatments
• Decentralized regulating bodies, which make it harder to hold insurance companies responsible for payments
• Delays by insurance companies in even beginning to process claims (the average lag time is 30 days)

Readers are invited to join an open discussion of the war on behavioral health care now available in the comments section following each installment.

Last week's installment, "The War on Behavioral Health Care: Part 1. Stigma Kills," discussed how stigma perpetuated by media and an uninformed populous shame people into suffering in silence out of fear of becoming marginalized from society. Look for next week's installment, "The War on Behavioral Health Care: Part 3. Standards of Care," on Tuesday, August 1^st.

About Sovereign Health
Sovereign Health's mission is to provide a broad spectrum of high-quality behavioral health treatment services for adults and adolescents, including support services for family members. One factor that differentiates Sovereign from other treatment providers has been the company's ability to offer separate mental health and addiction or dual diagnosis treatment programs at its facilities. For more information, visit www.sovhealth.com.

SOURCE Sovereign Health

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