When it comes to psychiatric treatment of complex diagnoses, the continuity of care is key to maintaining the overall well-being of people struggling with mental health issues. In the American healthcare system, the importance of returning to a mental health professional for recurring treatment cannot be overstated. This article will examine how and why this is so important for managing psychiatric conditions, and emphasize how it’s relevant in the U.S.
Understanding Psychiatric Disorders
When we talk about psychiatric disorders, we’re specifically discussing a wide spectrum of conditions that can only be diagnosed by a specialized mental health professional. Generally, this is a psychiatrist with both medical and psychological training, and these doctors are often supported by individuals who have undertaken psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner programs.
These disorders include depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder to anxiety, schizophrenia, and beyond. These conditions impact the psychological well-being of individuals and have serious effects on how they interact socially and in the workplace. These disorders aren’t uncommon in the U.S., either, which highlights the pressing need for sustainable and effective treatment solutions, but there’s still a long way to go in finding pathways that work for everyone.
What’s So Important About Continuity of Care?
Providing healthcare services over time in conjunction with medication is a generally applied treatment plan for serious psychiatric disorders. The continuity aspect is really important for a few different reasons:
Stability and symptom management
Long-term management under the care of a trained mental health professional is important to maintain mental stability and help with the alleviation of symptoms. Progress can also be monitored and interventions can be made to prevent relapses.
Establishing and maintaining a therapeutic relationship
Trust and honesty are key when dealing with psychiatric disorders. If you’re seeing someone different every month, it’s really difficult to build a lasting relationship, so this continuity of care is important to help with these developments and allow everyone to feel supported and understood throughout their treatment journey.
Medication management
As mentioned earlier, medication can be an important part of treating a psychiatric condition. The diligent management of medication is important to ensure that dosage adjustments and side effect mitigation are both being managed by someone who knows what they’re doing.
Coordination of holistic care
Sometimes people receive diagnoses for more than one mental health condition. This means that one-size-fits-all approaches aren’t possible and care plans need to fit the individual needs of the person being treated, so in this aspect, continuity of care allows healthcare professionals to collaborate and ensure that every aspect of their health, not just mental, is addressed cohesively.
What Are Some Challenges in the Continuity of Care?
As we’ve discussed, there are many reasons why seeing the same mental health practitioner regularly is important. In the healthcare landscape, however, there are many barriers to making this a reality for all Americans experiencing psychiatric disorders:
- Expense: The elephant in the room when it comes to healthcare. Insurance is expensive and out-of-pocket costs of repeat visits to a psychiatrist are often too much for the average American, especially given the impact on employment that some of these conditions can have.
- Fragmented healthcare system: Disjointed care delivery and difficulties in communication between providers are both huge barriers to continuity of care, especially if individuals are bound by insurance to a particular provider for different aspects of their care.
- Stigma and discrimination: Despite its prevalence in society, there are still massive stigmas surrounding all aspects of people’s mental health journeys. This is an enormous deterrent to people seeking diagnosis and adhering to treatment. There’s also the issue of discriminatory practices like denying employment or housing based on mental health history as a further barrier to people trying to access continuity of care.
What Can Be Done?
An action plan for allowing access to continuity of care would be a great step forward but would rely on governmental action in the healthcare sector, which private operators mostly facilitate. In a perfect world, all Americans would be able to access the best level of care possible and be able to visit the same healthcare facilities where they’d see the same healthcare practitioners. Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world, so we’ll have to settle for solutions like integrated care models and making high-level telehealth more affordable for more people.
In the landscape of American healthcare, it’s clear how important continuity of care is to address the ongoing and complex needs of people living with psychiatric disorders. If we prioritize consistent and, importantly, sustainable treatment practices, and share all these practices across an interconnected healthcare information network, we’ll see real change in care coordination and access. In the future, every individual could receive the comprehensive and continuous care they need to thrive.
