Mental Health Experts Applaud Focus on Parity
Now mental health advocates are almost giddy. The law signed by President Obama last week expands parity to a much wider pool, making it possible for millions more people to get the same coverage for substance abuse and illnesses like bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia as they would for, say, diabetes or cancer.
A lot of this still has to play out in terms of how parity works,” said Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, an advocacy group. But the new law “can change the mental health system in America and really give families and individuals an opportunity to get a level of access to care we could only fantasize about before this became law,” he said.
