The Murky Politics about Mind-Body

Tittle: The Murky Politics about Mind-Body.
Author: Sarah Kershaw.
Source: www.nytime.com/2008/03/30/weekinreview/30kers.hml
Date of Publication: March 30, 2008.

Vocabulary:
-Murky: adjective, disapproving or humorous, of peoples' actions or character, not clear known and suspected of not being honest.
-Mingle: verb, to combine or make one thing combine with another.
-Parity: noun, formal, the state of being equal, especially the state of having equal pay or status.
-Ailment: noun, an illness that is not very serious.
-Wobble: verb, to move from side to side in an unsteady way, to make somenthing do this.
-Chip away at : phrasal verb, figurative, to keep breaking small pieces off something, to gradually make somenting weaker.
-Moras: noun, an unpleassant and complicated situation that is difficult to scape from.
-Balk (AmE), Baulk (BrE): verb, to be unwilling to do somenthing or become involved in somenthing because it is difficult, dangerous, etc.
-Patchwork: noun, a thing that is made up of many different pieces or parts.
-Protracted: adjective, lasting longer than expected or longer than visual.



Mian Ideas:
-The dualism of mind-body lives on these days in less abstract form in the US under the question of how much of a difference should it make to health care and health insurance, if a condition is physical or mental? Recent scientific studies have blurred this line between these types of disorders. Now a critical moment has been reached in a 15-years debate over wether treatment for problems like depression, addiction and schizophrenia should get the same coverage by insurance companies as, say, diabetes, heart diseases and cancer.
-This month, the House has passed a bill that would require insurance companies to provide mental health insurance parity. It was the first time it has approved a proposal so substancial. The bill would ban insurance companies from setting lower limits on treatment for mental health problems than on treatment for physical problems, including doctor visits and hospital stays.
-Parity raises all sorts of tricky questions: Is an ailment a ligitimate disease if you can't test for it? If a patient says "Doctor, I feel hopeless" is that enough to justify a diagnosis of depression and health benefits to pay for treatment? How many therapy sessions are enough? If mental illness never ends, which is typically the case, how do you set a standar for coverage to that for physical ailments, many o which do end?.
-The US has a long history separating the treatment of mental and physical illness, dating back to the days when the severly mental ill were put in poorhouses, jails, and later, in public asylums. That ended after the 1960s, but mental health experts say that the delivery of servicies is still far from equal, because emotinal illness is still not considered to be a par with medical illness.
-Over the last 5 years, reserach studies examining the link between physical brain abnormalities and disorders like severe depression and shizophrenia have begun to make a long case that the disorders are manifestations of actual and often fatal, problems in brain circuitry. A growing number of studies are making the bilogical connection, redifining the concept of mental illness as brain illness.
-Anyway, some still question the legitimacy of calling any mental ailment a disease. A lauder chorus argues that adiction is a behavioral and social problem, even a choice, but not a disease, as many mental health professionals and the founders and followers of Alcoholic Anonynous mantain. Critics of parity say that anything that would not turn up in an autopsy cannot be equated with physical illness. These critics also say that because the mental abnormality research is so new, it still be considered theory rather than established basis for equal payment treatment.
-Nevertheless, as federal parity legislation has wobbled along over the years, 42 states have adopted their own verssions of parity, offering a patchwork of standars for insurance companies or coverage for addiction and mental illness. A federal law would extend insurance parity to tens of million more Americans who are not covered under the laws and set one broad standard for the nation.
-As states have experienced with parity, however, many providers have complained that insurance companies have often found it easy to deny benefits by ruling that claims are not "medically necessary", a potential taugh standar when it comes to ailments of the mind. Menawhile, attitudes about the mental illness and addiction have changed significally since advocates for the mental ill and for parity firts tried to include broad coverage of mental illness in the nation's insurance plans, and since pop culture has normalized rehabilitation and even suicide attemps, chipping away slowly at social stigmas and lending streght to the idea that the sufferer of mental illness and addiction may be a victim rather than a perpretor.
-Still a cancer patient generally remains a far more sympathetic figure than a cocaine addict or a schizophrenic. But scientists advances may go a long way to help the parity cause. The biological and neurological connection lends streght to the notion that mental illness are as real and urgent as physical illness.
-The Senate passed its own bill with substancial differences from the House bill, which has been co-sponsored by Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island. Mr. Kennedy has admitted to struggling with addiction and depresion. On the other hand, President Bush, who has voiced support for the more limited coverage called for in the Senate bill, has siad he would not support the House version.
-The House bill would require insurance companies that offer mental helth benefits to cover treatment for the hundred of diagnosis included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Bush administration and other opponents say the list of disorders is far too broad.

Personal Reaction:
There's no doubt that there are striking similarities between mental and physical diseases. There is suffereing, there is a lack of skills, a quality of life tragically reduced and the need for help.
People should develop a concept of mental health that focuses on the similarities and at the same time, respects the differences with both types ol illness. What is important is not to allow those differences to produce radically disparate between both medical conditions. Because if we do so, there will be no other consequence than a disparate in the forms of the treatment and and in the form of insurance as well.
Private insurance companies may be more difficult to convince of such similarities, probably because of economical reasons. It's believed that more than thinking on their clients benefits, they first think on their own profits. But that the national insurance plans do not include in their bills mental helath care is simply unacceptable. A health care system is every human being right, no mattter which their particular medical condition may be.