“Severe Shortage Of Psychiatrists Exacerbated By Lack Of Federal Funding”
“nearly 1 in 20 adults in the U.S. — some 13.6 million — live with some form of serious mental illness. Sixty percent of those adults received no mental health services in the past year. The report also notes that in June 2016, mental health took up the largest amount of U.S. health care spending for the first time.
Since 2000, Kirch says medical schools have worked to expand psychiatry departments, increasing the number of spots by 30 percent. But the federal government, which funds medical residency programs, put a cap on them under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
“That number has been capped for 20 years now by legislation,” Kirch says. “No one intended that legislation to become permanent. And now that the population is both growing and aging, it’s become the bottleneck…
Kirch and other mental health advocates are urging Congress to act on legislation to expand medical residency training programs as a method of dealing with this crisis.”
