把急诊室当成精神病院是行不通的

Sometimes the emergency room becomes a mental health ward.经常有no beds available in psychiatric hospitals因此，急诊室是一个精神健康消费者可以相对安全并受到监督的地方。这种事在我身上发生过几次，这问题太严重了《今日美国》在一个系列文章中提到过。¹但这充其量是无效的，在最坏的情况下只会让事情变得更糟。以下是为什么将急诊室用作精神健康病房是行不通的。

为什么急诊室不能用作精神健康病房?

有几个原因可以说明为什么把急诊室用作精神健康病房是一个坏主意。以下是其中一些。

It's Expensive for Mental Health Consumers to Go to the Emergency Room

根据《今日美国》：

根据联邦医疗保健研究与质量局(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)的数据，每年有近550万人因精神疾病进了急诊室，占所有就诊人数的4%。因为许多精神病人没有保险, hospitals often are uncompensated for their care. ...That increases the burden both on hospitals and taxpayers, who support emergency care through payments to medical centers that treat a "disproportionate share" of indigent patients.In fiscal year 2012, the USA spent $11.4 billion on these payments, about $456 million of that going to the care of the mentally ill.

尽早提供治疗的成本效益要高得多。然而，由于《平价医疗法案》的废除，许多心理健康消费者失业了，没有保险。因此，他们很难得到治疗，直到成为紧急情况。我曾经遇到过这种情况，我的治疗提供者削减了我的治疗，因为我负担不起。My condition worsened and I frequently ended up in the hospital when it could have been prevented by adequate treatment.The problem is healthcare has become a business when it needs to be a service.

各州在削减医疗补助计划(Medicaid)和昂贵的精神科服务的压力下，经常削减旨在让精神疾病患者远离医院的项目。他们还削减了精神病患者的病床数量。这就造成了一种情况监狱是最大的心理健康提供者．And many mental health consumers who go to the Emergency Room for help end up in jail, usually for creating a disruption due to their mental illness symptoms or trying to leave.我见过这种事。That leads to the next reason that using emergency rooms as mental health wards doesn't work: emergency rooms are unequipped to treat mental health emergencies.

Emergency Rooms Are Unequipped to Treat Mental Health Crises

《今日美国》写着:

In some hospitals, psychiatric patients get private rooms in the emergency department.Elsewhere, they may "board" in hallways, surrounded by noise, trauma and bright lights 24 hours a day, says Mark Pearlmutter, vice president and chief of emergency network services at Steward Health Care in the Boston area.Some patients are physically restrained.

试着在那种情况下变得更好。

At the hospital affiliated with my treatment provider, if the patient goes in through the Emergency Room, the patient dons a blue paper jumpsuit and wears a tracking bracelet, forcing the patient to ask to go to the bathroom because it goes off--very loudly--if the patient leaves a certain area.The only people who can turn the bracelet off are hospital security, made up mostly of off-duty police officers (Call the Police in a Mental Health Crisis as a Last Resort)．患者经常等心理健康危机咨询师和他们交谈几个小时，在此期间，他们被关在一间灯光明亮、门开着的房间里。这不是一个治疗环境。

The Emergency Room is equipped to treat physical illness, not mental illness.Boarding a psychiatric patient in the Emergency Room instead of the mental health ward causes a backup of care that threatens everybody, as other people are forced to wait in the waiting room longer.然而，当各州削减医院床位时，处于危机中的病人必须去别的地方，而通常是去急诊室——这让急诊室的工作人员非常沮丧。My personal favorite line is, "We need to save these beds for sick people."

How to Stop Using Emergency Rooms as Mental Health Wards

We need to stop treating healthcare as a means for profit and start treating it as humanitarian work because it is the right thing to do.The hospital affiliated with my treatment provider has a designated psychiatric emergency room and can admit people from there.It also has ways to get treatment that don't involve an Emergency Room that are less traumatizing and more beneficial for the person in crisis.Mental illness will not go away because we slash beds.It simply becomes more expensive, more traumatic for the patient, and more frustrating for hospital staff.

你也可以在谷歌+，脸谱网而且推特而且Linkedin．

来源

¹漠不关心的代价:无处可去