Advocates of nondiscriminatory coverage for mental illness made the case for parity to Congressional staff at the Capitol last month at a symposium marking Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW).

Participants praised legislation that was signed by President Bill Clinton September 26

(Psychiatric News, October 18) and takes a first step toward parity.

APA Medical Director Melvin Sabshin, M.D., introduced the other speakers, including APA President Harold Eist, M.D.; Columbia University Medical School Dean Herbert Pardes, M.D.; and Lori Rivera, who suffers from bipolar disorder and spoke on behalf of the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association (NDMDA).

Mental Illness Awareness Week was observed this year from October 6 to 12.

Prior to the symposium, now in its 14th year, Sabshin had issued a statement praising the new legislation as "a significant step along the road to true parity." But Sabshin cautioned that "despite this legislative advance, the illnesses and their treatments still are shrouded in myth, ignorance, and stigma. Therefore, we must be doubly sure that health policy affecting people with mental illness is based on fact coming from good science."

Rivera recalled how only after enduring misdiagnosis and struggle did she finally understand her problem and receive appropriate treatment. She remembered how those she thought were friends abandoned her during her hospitalization. But she also brought the message that progress in understanding and implementing treatments now offers more hope than ever to the mentally ill provided they have access to these treatments through adequate insurance coverage.

Discriminatory coverage is the root problem, said Rivera. "This is life and death for me, and I'm a person just like you."

Referring to Rivera, Eist said she spoke "for the millions of Americans with mental illnesses and their family members that have been treated unfairly simply because of their diagnosis. Why shouldn't persons with mental illnesses have the same kinds of protections that are available for other medical conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes? It is simple stupidity to continue practices which are based on ignorance."

Mental illness is both a national health care problem and a business problem, said Eist. "Untreated mental illness costs American businesses and American taxpayers literally billions of dollars every year in the form of reduced productivity, lost work days, higher absenteeism, and increased crime."

Both Pardes and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Steven Hyman, M.D., discussed how breakthroughs in neuroscience are making treatment of mental illness more and more effective.

"Part of the brain is broken," said Hyman. "No one should be ashamed of having a disease of the brain."

Echoing Pardes and Hyman, Laura Lee Hall, Ph.D., commented that scientific data are "the currency by which we will convince" policymakers to implement parity. "Science provides proof of the discrimination and people provide the passion," she said. Hall is deputy director of policy and research for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

(Psychiatric News, November 1, 1996)