Kaiser's 2,600 Mental Health Workers Strike in California

[Omaha Steve]

Source: ABC News-AP

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

Hundreds of Kaiser Permanente mental health professionals throughout California kicked off a weeklong strike Monday to protest what they say is a lack of staffing that affects care.

The health care provider's 2,600 psychologists, therapists and social workers walked out to demand that Kaiser Permanente offer timely, quality mental health care at its psychiatry departments and clinics, said Jim Clifford, a union member and San Diego psychiatric therapist.

Clifford said some patients have to wait up to two months for follow-up appointments, which prolongs the recovery process.

"Kaiser purports to be the leader in health care, but it's continuing the history of discrimination against the mentally ill, and that's unacceptable to us," said Clifford, who has been with Kaiser for 13 years.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/hundreds-kaiser-mental-health-staff-strike-statewide-28163230

[tblue]

1. 2 months waiting to see your psych

is a nightmare for some. It can cause tremendous suffering and regression. I believe if we made mental healthcare easily available, and got around the stigma of seeking it out, we could solve a lot of what ails this country.

I'm glad these mental healthcare providers are fighting for their patients right to adequate care.

[lovemydog]

2. I support the union.

[KamaAina]

3. At Kaiser's Santa Teresa complex in San Jose, psychiatry is several blocks down the road

from the rest of the complex. Clearly it is getting short shrift.

[The empressof all]

4. I left the field over ten years ago

It was a disgrace then...I can only imagine the frustration these workers contend with on a daily basis. Those kinds of waits have been routine for years. Social Workers and case managers are stretched to their limits and often only making a little over minimum wage. Glad they are standing up for the patients and themselves.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I bailed out on any work that involved 3rd party payers 7 or so years ago.

Things have been getting worse in mental health for more than a decade now. The behemoths have driven the small private outpatient clinics out of business, and replaced them with totally inadequate services. Problems that would be best addressed with psychotherapy instead get routed to nurse-practitioners & physicians assistants, who prescribe symptom-suppressing medications.

Almost all I do these days is criminal forensic psych evaluations, with one small county HHS contract on the side. I have never looked back.

[The empressof all]

6. I have never regretted leaving but still have residual angry feelings.

I was in middle management and it became more about satisfying the paper than about providing quality services. It also began to feel unsafe. I worked with a chronic population who needed more intensive contact than we were able to provide and many of our clients had become fairly institutionalized to the prison system which was the third largest mental health provider in the state at the time. It was and probably still is easier to get people arrested when they decompensated than to get them into a hospital bed.

When I started to recognize my own PTSD symptoms...I was able to get out... I was lucky I had other options.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. We definitely inhabit the same world.

Many years ago I consulted to nursing homes housing aged chronically mentally ill populations about mandated med reduction programs; I was also a regional chief psychologist for Community Corrections in WI and superviser of several outpatient clinics over the years.

Been there, seen it, got pissed off about it.

[greiner3]

8. That's just crazy!

For anyone that might be offended by my reaction, my first visit to a mental health counselor was at age 12 and my first anti-depressant was written when I was 16.

I took lithium for 22 years but it has only been the last 10 or so years that I've felt good enough to, well, do much of anything constructive.

BTW, I was shaking so badly that I was on the path to get DBS, Deep Brain Stimulation, but the best psychiatrist I've ever had, and also a team member of the screening process for the procedure found that I was pretty much toxic on lithium and that was what was causing me to shake so violently that I could not hold a drink with both hands and not wear it.

I now am on carbamazapine and Lamictal, off labeled for bipolar and feel fine.