Health Policy Commons^™

Fairness Issues In Law And Mental Health: Directions For Future Social Work Research, Jose B. Ashford, Jane Holschuh

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Concepts from the procedural justice literature in social psychology are examined that offer useful guidance for social work researchers with interests in investigating informal adjudications, speciality treatment courts, and other areas of the administrative process previously neglected in mental health services research. These theoretical concepts are offered as an alternative to the therapeutic jurisprudence framework being adopted by some social workers in the field of law and mental health. The issues outlined in this paper also draw on the health services and psychotherapy literature to highlight issues involving process and procedure as social justice and their significance for advancing a …

Maine State Government's Worksite Wellness Program, William C. Mcpeck

William C. McPeck

This is an unpublished report I wrote for Maine Governor John Baldacci to share with the National Governor's Association. The report reflects the history and current initiatives of Maine State Government's employee wellness program.

Mental Illness And Barriers To Health Care Access, Charlene Powell

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Statement of Problem

Access to health care in the United States is major concern, despite the fact that the country spends more per capita on health care than any other country. Individuals with mental illness may face greater access problems than the general population.

Research Question

• Does mental illness predict greater difficulties with access to health care?

Methodology

The 2004 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) was used to examine the barriers to health care among individuals reporting a mental illness diagnosis. Nine questions relating to health access problems were drawn from the survey and combined into an access index. Multivariate …

Subsidizing Addiction: Do State Health Insurance Mandates Increase Alcohol Consumption?, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

A model of addiction in which individuals are forward looking implies that as the availability of addiction treatment options grows, individuals will consume more of an addictive good. We test this implication using cross-state variation in the adoption of mental health parity mandates that include substance abuse treatments. We examine the effects of these mandates on the consumption of alcohol and find that parity legislation leads to an increase in alcohol consumption. To account for the possible endogeneity of the adoption of mental health parity mandates, we perform an instrumental variables analysis and find that the ordinary least squares estimation …

Mandatory Waiting Periods For Abortions And Female Mental Health, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Proponents of laws requiring a waiting period before a woman can receive an abortion argue that these cooling off periods protect against rash decisions on the part of women in the event of unplanned pregnancies. Opponents claim, at best, waiting periods have no effect on decision-making and, at worst, they subject women to additional mental anguish and stress. In this article, I examine these competing claims using adult female suicide rates at the state level as a proxy for mental health. Panel data analyses suggest that the adoption of mandatory waiting periods reduce suicide rates by about 10 percent, and …