Focus on the Vision Intended to promote leadership and provide directions in the planning, development, and coordination of ways to encourage involvement of Consumers and family members of the into the Mental Health System.
Although mental health and general health are clearly connected, a chasm exists between the mental health care and general health care systems in both practice and financing.
For nearly four decades, consumers of mental health services have advocated for improved quality and access to mental health services in the . This modern consumer movement is hardly the fi rst reform effort to impact mental health care in . Records show that as early as the mid-1800s, former psychiatric patients and others had worked to improve the deplorable, abusive conditions rampant among the mental institutions of the day.
Conditions have improved dramatically over the years, but advocates continue to fi ght for patients’ rights, work to overcome prejudice and discrimination, and promote self-help, peer support, and recovery.
Our country must make a commitment: Americans with mental illness deserve our understanding, and they deserve excellent care. They deserve a health system that treats their illness with the same urgency as a physical illness.