Integrating Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment Services into Health Care

Award Year: 1993	Investigator: Richard Frank, Thomas McGuire	Budget: $249,996	Categories: Mental Health, Substance Abuse
Abstract: This project develops a strategy to fully integrate mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) services into the medical care system. An alternative to the current complex and fragmented mix of public/private sector services and financing for seriously mentally ill persons and substance abusers will be outlined. The costs of full integration as well as the political, social, and clinical developments that provide the basis for mainstreaming MH/SA care are addressed. The project considers how full integration radically reshapes the existing institutions paying for and providing MH/SA care. The complex technical and political-economic issues that arise with full integration are studied in a concrete fashion through a series of six case studies of states. A state-level simulation model is developed, illuminating the effects of full integration on the affected parties.