News Releases

Behavioral Healthcare Highlighted in June Issue Brief

The Center’s most recent issue brief, Behavioral Healthcare Checkup: Are We Where We Need to Be?, focuses on the behavioral healthcare system in Northeast Ohio.  Today it is widely accepted that behavioral health is just as important to our overall wellbeing as is physical health.  Like chronic physical illness, behavioral health disorders, which include both mental illness and substance abuse disorders, affect a person’s ability to carry out the functions of their daily lives.  Timely, effective treatment can mitigate symptoms and provide the opportunity for individuals to function more fully in society and carry out more productive lives.  Yet people who need treatment do not always get it.

The Center’s issue brief takes a look at the behavioral health system as it has evolved over the last several decades, how it is funded and some of the challenges that still remain.  An incomplete continuum of care, lack of care coordination and emergency department boarding of psychiatric patients are discussed as some of Northeast Ohio’s most significant behavioral health challenges. 

To read this publication or to see other issue briefs in The Center’s collection, please visit the issue briefs section of our website.