How Expensive Is Canadian Mental Health Care Compared To Us

Introduction

Wherever you may be, mental illnesses can take numerous forms in the same way physical afflictions do. Mental illness is not understood enough by many people. Hence, psychiatric medications are often prescribed for mental illness treatment. Many people use such medicines for recovery from mental ailments.

In Canada, mental illnesses are costly to the individual, his family and the community. Only about one third of the people who need mental health care services in Canada actually get to receive them.

History

Canadian mental health studies reveal that one out of five Canadian adults under the age of sixty five suffer with a mental health disability. This is a high figure. Mental ailments make up a large percentage of in-patient treatment each year.

Provincial government in Canada has the main jurisdiction for the planning and execution of Canadian mental health services.

Features

The economic cost of mental illnesses in the Canadian mental health care system is around eight billion dollars or more. An additional six billion dollars is spent on uninsured mental health services and other anti depressive treatment that is not dealt with by the Canadian mental health care system.

The Canadian mental health care system may be expensive but it is not as much as its counterpart in the United States. The public as well as private mental health care system in the United States is probably the most expensive in the world. In comparison with the Canadian mental health care cost figures, serious mental illnesses cost the United States about one hundred and ninety billion dollars in lost earnings per year as per the 'American Journal of Psychiatry’. This is mainly because insurance companies in the United States are reluctant to regard mental illnesses on the same plane as the physical ones and they do not end up paying well enough to treat them.

The single-payer national health insurance system in Canada uses a single public agency that organizes health financing even though the execution of such services could remain private. This kind of a system, when compared with the United States program on mental health care, saves money on unnecessary medical services and paperwork. Mental patients in Canada have free choice of doctor and the institute that they could get treated at. At the same time, the physicians have autonomy over the patients’ mental health care.

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