Better mental health treatments urged

The need for new diagnostic and treatment tools prompts a federal report and a sharpened focus by a research center.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Nov. 21, 2005.

Washington -- Diagnosing depression correctly is generally a matter of asking the right questions.

While many other diseases can be detected via blood tests or various scans, a clinical diagnosis is still the way to identify this common mental illness, said Karen L. Swartz, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

But trying to incorporate this often lengthy process is among the biggest challenges for the time-strapped primary care physician, she said. Dr. Swartz is the director of clinical programs at Johns Hopkins' new mood disorders center.

Mental health and substance abuse treatment, long the poor stepchildren of the nation's health care system, received increased attention Nov. 1 as Johns Hopkins announced it was mounting a new offensive to find effective treatments for mood disorders and as an Institute of Medicine panel released a new report urging improvements in the way mental health and substance abuse treatment is delivered.

The IOM report, "Improving the Quality of Health Care for Mental and Substance-Use Conditions," took broad aim at issues that hamper the delivery of appropriate care to the millions of Americans who require treatment for mental illness or for the inappropriate use of alcohol and drugs.

Mental health and substance abuse disorders cause more than 33 million Americans to seek care each year, the IOM report said. But the care they receive is not as good as it could be.