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American Public Health Association
133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition
December 10-14, 2005
Philadelphia, PA
APHA 2005
 
3167.0: Monday, December 12, 2005 - 12:42 PM

Abstract #107445

Connected separateness or separate connection: The integration of primary care and behavioral health

Nancy J. Kennedy, DrPH, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1 Choke Cherry Lane, Room 4-1023, Rockville, MD 20857, 240-276-2497, nancy.kennedy@samhsa.hhs.gov

As policymakers, insurers and providers of mental health services increasingly narrow treatment opportunities to episodic care, they ignore long-standing calls to integrate services. Few consumers, whatever their socioeconomic circumstances or access to care, seek services because they themselves recognize that they suffer from a mental disorder, a substance use disorder or even one of the ubiquitous problems of living. Unfortunately, our current health care system, in both its organization and financing, attempts to medicalize these conditions, relegating problems associated with mental health to a lesser status. Creating the health care system requires adopting “body with mind” as a tenet of consumer-directed health care. Consumers do not experience mental and physical health separately, although the dualism of the health care systems for primary care and mental health suggests that they do. Preventive and rehabilitative interventions shift a great deal of responsibility for health care from providers to consumers, a healthy shift from a past in which people with mental and physical disorders were often relegated to passive roles in their own treatment. The objective of an integrated delivery system is both to increase the quality of life and to reduce the financial burden of care. Since the bulk of factors that affect well-being manifest in a wide array of behavioral and physical symptoms, there must be a unified, transdisciplinary approach to them in order to prevent predictable problems or to lessen their impact.

Learning Objectives:

Keywords: Resource Development, Service Integration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Transdisciplinary Approach to Integrating Primary Care and Behavioral Health

The 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition (December 10-14, 2005) of APHA