[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Improving Staff Shortage
Over the past 30 years, as the care and treatment of persons with serious mental illness has shifted from the institutional state hospitals system to the community, one of the most notable trends has been the dramatic increase in the number of persons with co-occurring psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. The stressors of community life, together with the acute shortage of effective treatment, residential and rehabilitation services, has led too often to "self-medication" with illegal substances or alcohol that only exacerbate pre-existing psychiatric conditions. While reliable data is hard to come by, many programs that work with persons with serious mental illness report co-occurring substance abuse rates as high as 80% (Audit Commission, 2001).
Little is known about the availability of mental health professionals in our country. The counts of these professionals and information on their demographic, professional and practice characteristics are limited. According to data in Mental Health, United States, 1998 there were 33,486 psychiatrists, 73,018 psychologists, 192,814 social workers, 15,330 psychiatric nurses (graduate level), 61,100 professional counselors and 26,482 school psychologists who were clinically trained in our country according to the most recent year of data, which ranged from 1995-1998 for different disciplines.
Driven by a shortage of mental health care providers -- particularly psychiatrists and lower-level nurse technicians -- programs are turning to creative efforts to meet patient demand. Even so, ongoing budget cuts in city, state and federal funding mean some clients must be turned away. "We're caught in the fiscal woes of the city," said Terry Wong, director of Sunset Mental Health Services, run by the Department of City Public Health in San Francisco (David, 2002). Instead of not being able to fill positions, we're looking at the possibility of layoffs.
Sunset Mental Health operates two outpatient sites, with its 24 staffers handling 1,000 cases at any given time, nearly half of whom speak only Russian or Chinese...............
