A Better Mental Health “Parity” Law for North Carolina

By Debra Dihoff, NAMI-NC

Right now, more than 30 states do a better job than North Carolina in providing equal insurance coverage for mental and physical illness for their citizens. North Carolina law provides limited mental health “parity,” requiring coverage only for state employees. But this is the year to make a change for the better and allow more of us to benefit from needed mental health and substance abuse treatment.

This year, the General Assembly is seriously discussing legislation that would extend the success we’ve had with mental health parity to more insurance plans and to a wider range of conditions, including substance abuse disorders.

As any person with a mental illness or the members of their family will tell you, mental disorders are as real as cancer or heart disease. Why should insurance plans provide any less coverage because the brain needs treatment instead of the heart or the liver? The brain is arguably the most important part of our bodies, and yet we allow plans to provide less coverage for its treatment than for other physical ailments.

In addition, the recovery rates for mental illnesses are actually greater than those for many “physical” illnesses. For instance, success rates for treating mental health disorders are 60-80 percent – well in excess of the 41-52 percent treatment success rate for heart disease. For too long, we have allowed stigma and fear to prevail over science.

Expanding parity will provide needed hope to the one in five individuals who will experience a mental illness—many of whom find it difficult to afford treatment. Studies show that only one out of three adults (and even fewer children) receives the mental health services they need.

As other states have realized, parity makes good business sense. In the workplace, major depression alone costs employers an estimated $44 billion in lost productive work time every year. And, untreated depression has serious implications for those who live with other chronic health conditions. According to the National Business Group on Health, employees with both diabetes and depression have healthcare costs that are 4.5 times higher than those without depression.

In our classrooms, more than twenty percent of our children have a diagnosable mental health or addictive disorder and too often they lack the treatment they need to succeed at school. Nearly half of our teenagers who have a mental health disorder drop out of high school—the highest rate of any disability group. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, but there are long delays before people receive the help they need.

Congress is considering federal legislation to equalize coverage for mental and physical illnesses. But Raleigh cannot wait for Washington to act. We don’t know when a bill will pass Congress and we need a solution now that meets our needs here in North Carolina.

This past year, we have seen countless newspaper articles about those with mental illnesses ending up in emergency departments, homeless, in the criminal justice system and in our state hospitals. Untreated and under-treated mental illness is taking a terrible toll on our families and our communities.

Let’s change paths and give the hope of earlier help for mental health and substance abuse disorders to more of our citizens. It’s the smart choice for North Carolina. It’s the right choice. It’s time for a better parity law.

Debra G. Dihoff is Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness North Carolina