Mental Health Information

is that it costs a lot to treat, even if the patient is doing well. For a lot of people who suffer from mental illnesses, the meds don't necessarily take care of everything. Many people remain on social security disability payments and Medicaid even if they are in treatment. It's not like you're going to put all these guys out on the street, give them some meds, and it will make it all better. Most of them are probably not going to go from a full blown mental illness to perfect members of society with a prescription. A lot of those guys will end up on the street and crawl inside a bottle.

To give people who are not aware of the costs of treating a mental illness, I'll give you a brief overview of the costs of treating mine.

I'm doing well now days and I have been for the last ten years, but I'm still in treatment and it's because of that that I'm doing so well. I was hospitalized three times before I finally got the proper treatment: two 7 day stints and one 3 day stay. The cost of the seven day stays before my insurance was around $10,000 a piece. My share after coverage was $2000 each. It's probably safe to say that the cost of the 3 day stay was at least $4000 before insurance. Note: probably almost all of the people described in the article do not have insurance. After I finally started getting the proper treatment, I went to talk therapy for about a year, once every couple of weeks. That's all my insurance would cover. The therapist charged $100 per session (one hour) and my insurance only covered half the cost. For the last ten years I've been on three psychiatric medications. I have to go to a psychiatrist once every three months for check-ups and to get my scripts. That costs $85 before insurance for a 15 minute session. My share of that is $40, that's my co-pay whether I see the guy for 5 minutes or an hour. One of my medications recently went generic and the other two have been since I started treatment. But for about 9 years my medication cost me $100 a month after insurance, about $350 before coverage. In the months before the one med went generic, just the cost for that one drug went up to $700 a month before insurance coverage. Now that all my meds are generics, it still costs me $30 a month for them with insurance coverage, about $100 before coverage. And I must stress, most of the people in the article will have no insurance! They won't even have jobs. And as I said before, if these guys do manage to get treatment, it doesn't guarantee that they'll be able to fit back into society.

It's fine if you want to help these guys and keep them out of jail, but it's not going to be cheap if you truly are concerned about their well being, which I doubt Huffman is. She's just looking at ways to cut corners. One word: blowback.