Washington — Congress has an opportunity to create a mental health system for the 21st century by funding the training and research necessary to address the growing demand for care and putting mental health on an equal footing with physical health, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association told a congressional panel.
“[W]e desperately need a diverse and robust mental health system,” Mitch Prinstein, PhD, told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (PDF, 197KB)opens in new window. “Our country invests over $15 billion annually to ensure we have enough physical health care providers, with the appropriate specialties throughout the country. Yet we invest less than 1 percent of this amount to build our mental health care workforce.”
America’s mental health care system is at a turning point much like the one the nation faced after World War II, Prinstein said. That was when the federal government created the Veterans Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health.
“That time has come again,” he said. “Today, we now know that bifurcating physical and mental health is based on antiquated notions.”
He noted that Medicare does not reimburse psychological graduate trainees, although it does reimburse medical residents. Graduate interns in psychology have an average of over 700 hours of direct patient care experience—“more than medical residents do,” he said.
Prinstein called on Congress to reauthorize and significantly expand the Graduate Psychology Education and Minority Fellowship programs and to enact the Mental Health Professionals Workforce Shortage Loan Repayment Act, both of which would help build a stronger—and more diverse—mental health workforce. And he asked the panel to give the Department of Labor the authority to levy financial penalties against health insurers that violate the federal parity law that requires them to cover mental health issues on par with physical health issues. Without this authority, “enforcement will be almost impossible,” he said.
Finally, he urged the senators to help expand the United States’ investment in psychological science “so we can better understand psychopathology, develop novel treatments and build resilience before the next stressor comes.”
“A $1 billion increase … for youth mental health research would still be a very small proportion of the allocation currently offered to study conditions that afflict far fewer youth than those currently suffering from psychological disorders,” he said.