Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #107445

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:

• To briefly review the opportunities and challenges in integrating primary care and
• behavioral health;
• To discuss the role of community resources and the involvement of consumers and families;
• To differentiate between clinical care and health care by focusing on transdisciplinary care;
• To highlight the needs of the poor and underserved and the recognition of community-based primary care inclusive of behavioral health;

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.