There is a great piece of legislation that is being debated right now, and is long overdue for our kids.

The House and Senate both agree that the legislation is needed, they just differ on whether it stands on its own, or gets grouped together with some other things. What is this great piece of legislation?

It allows for mental health issues to be treated the same as medical issues. This means not limiting the number of treatments or sessions per year and allowing the same deductible as regular health insurance.

Interestingly, the proponents for this particular piece of legislation are one Republican and one Democrat, but both have battled alcohol addiction. Representative Patrick Kennedy and Representative Jim Ramstad co-sponsored the bill.

As with most legislation there is the issue of how to fund it. It is estimated that it will cost $3.4 billion over the next 10 years. For those of us with kids with mental illness we don’t much care, we just need to be able to get help for our kids.

My own personal insurance allows twelve counseling sessions in a twelve month period. For severely mentally ill kids, that doesn’t get you very far. Then there is the issue of using more than one provider. My son saw an attachment therapist and a psychiatrist. We ate up those twelve appointments very quickly. Our insurance covered 7 days in a psychiatric hospital for him which only began to cover the time he needed there.

Our family is not that different than many other families with special needs kids. We struggle to pay the bills and take care of the needs of our kids. My son has ten mental health diagnoses. We can’t get by with the “normal” amount of appointments. He is currently in his third different residential treatment center. Twelve appointments a year gets us through the first few months and then we’re on our own. We have to make decisions about which bills to pay so we can get his mental health needs met. Then there are the issues his needs create in my husband and me. The Depression and Secondary Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by living with a severely mentally ill child.

This bill would greatly help our family and so many other families just like ours, and probably like yours. Companies with less than 50 employees would still be exempt from complying with this, but for so many other families, it would provide the much needed financial relief. Even the National Alliance on Mental Illness supports this bill.

You can read the full article here.



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