For over the last half-century, mental illnesses definition has changed significantly. Mental health reform was a public health concern that had remained untouched both in the field of medicine and households until 2015 in the United States. This type of disorder had affected and until to date, it has affected different types of people and especially post-war soldiers. In some cases, the mental disorder is severe enough to affect the mental state of a person which also affects their families and loved ones. Before the implementation of this policy, the question regarding the situation was posed as "what could have been done to help overcome this?" With this, the Mental Health Reform Act intended to ensure proper care for mental illness patient so that they can be living equally to living normal lives. Understanding the stigma and mental health, it was upon the nurses to research and analyze what exactly it is. Further, nurses as the mental health advocates had to work with federal legislators in a conjunctive effort intended to protect the mental health track parity.
Through the research efforts of nurses, the Act was created to provide psychological, psychiatric, and supportive care for individuals for mental illness and other related disorders. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) supported the nurses in their research on mental health disorders whereas the Senate proposed a bill, S. 1945 Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 intended to redeem the lost proper care for mental health disorder patients. The proposed bill that supported this Act was sponsored by Louisiana, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy and it was enacted on 5 th August 2015. The core stakeholders for this Act include the Registered Nurses Association and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) who represented the Education, Health, Labor and Pensions Committee as bipartisan legislation.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
References
Chapman, S. A., Phoenix, B. J., Hahn, T. E., & Strod, D. C. (2018). Utilization and economic contribution of psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners in public behavioral health services. American journal of preventive medicine , 54 (6), S243-S249.
Happell, B., Ewart, S. B., Platania ‐ Phung, C., & Stanton, R. (2016). Participative mental health consumer research for improving physical health care: An integrative review. International journal of mental health nursing , 25 (5), 399-408.