- How has the power gap impacted the lives of people with mental illness how is this similar or different from autistic persons?
In the US, approximately 4 persons meet the diagnostic conditions for a mental illness yearly, where a significant number of them have been noted to have severe or recurring illnesses. In spite of this, mental healthcare is poorly funded and misunderstood. Gaining access to appropriate mental healthcare often carries a high financial cost that people with mental illnesses and their families cannot afford. As a result, many people with mental illnesses have access to substandard care, which barely meets their needs. This form of experience has been considered by a large number of people as a form of damaging stigma (Kelly, 2006). This means that there are persons who can be able to gain access to short-term mental health services in times of crisis, however not during times of need. Therefore, the public and private health insurance strategies might offer coverage that is not sufficient for mental healthcare in comparison to the one provided for physical disorders.
Power gaps exist within the public mental health system, where services are provided by non-governmental as well as consumer organizations. These crucial services subsist on disjointed and provisional forms of funding. This kind of infectiveness within the healthcare system throws people with mental illness at a disadvantage where they are left with limited choices that hinder their recovery and places them at risk from numerous negative outcomes. These power gaps also reinforce a belief that treatment of mental illness requires coercive forms of care like the involuntary hospitalization. In contention, Kelly states that the absence of a health care system that is effective prevents mental illness patients from attaining other types of freedom like full participation in social and political life (Kelly, 2006).
In the case of autism, advances in psychiatric science are offering proof to various misguided analogies where many commentators have opposed the portrayal of this condition as not being fully human. In other words, autism is changing the manner in which people think about disability (Caruso, 2010). This is what is impacting the balance existing between insurance coverage and developing novel markets that advocate for regulatory interventions. Furthermore, this approach is against the traditional assumptions concerning retribution and punishment, a move that is prompting a massive investment of public and private resources. The implication here is that it is changing the aesthetics of suffering, and in so doing, it is rearranging legislative priorities.
An autism diagnosis can imply a number of diverse things considering that it’s undefined as a variable cluster of numerous symptoms such as cognitive and sensory. Those individuals that get to be identified as autistic might suffer intensely from certain symptoms and insignificantly from others, and it becomes hard to tell where to place within the spectrum. There are walks for autism that are nationally and locally organized to assist in the generation of awareness and also bring about meaningful appropriations to the cause. This has changed many aspects of autism, particularly its funding (Caruso, 2010). Initially, funding for its research dragged behind as compared to other disabling conditions; however, this has changed because donations continue to pour in, and numerous celebrities are part of an effective fund-raising program. Besides, media tycoons have taken a personal initiative and become involved in autism matters.
References
Caruso, D. (2010). Autism in the US: Social movement and legal change. American journal of law & medicine, 36(4), 483-539.
Kelly, B. D. (2006). The power gap: Freedom, power, and mental illness. Social Science & Medicine, 63(8), 2118-2128.