USA Today Article Highlights Importance of "Peer Counselors" in Mental Health
'Peers' may ease mental health worker shortage under Obamacare
When he was 44, Ben Achord recently recalled, he was "the picture of success." Married with three kids, he was a manager at a Charlotte, N.C., manufacturing company and owned a handsome four-bedroom house.
What he didn't know was he was suffering from schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental illness that can cause severe depression, delusions and hallucinations. Unaware of his condition, he self-medicated with alcohol, and before his 45th birthday he had lost everything—his family, his job and his house. He lived on the streets, twice attempted suicide and spent several months in a mental hospital in Georgia.
Twenty-five years later, Achord is helping others with mental illness as a "certified peer specialist" licensed by the state of Georgia. Armed with non-clinical training from the state, Achord helps people with mental illness stay on their medications, find jobs and housing and build social support networks.
Peer programs such as Georgia's could become especially important once the Affordable Care Act takes effect early next year.
The federal health law will require Medicaid and all other health plans to cover mental health services on par with insurance coverage of physical illnesses. It also will add an estimated 8 million people to the Medicaid rolls in the first year, many of whom will have untreated mental illnesses. Another 7 million people are expected to get federal tax subsidies to purchase health insurance, many for the first time.
That surge in demand, combined with an already severe shortage of mental health workers, has many worried there won't be enough providers to serve everyone in need. States have deployed a variety of strategies to alleviate the longstanding shortage of mental health professionals. But experts agree peer specialists are the most successful.
Research shows that by using peer specialists, states can save mental health money by reducing hospitalizations and other emergency interventions. And people with mental illness who are helped by peers tend to experience more thorough and longer-lasting recoveries.
"They are a terribly important new addition to the workforce," says Bob Glover, director of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. "When peers are involved, outcomes are dramatically better across the board," he says.
Achord believes that if it weren't for his 23-year-old daughter, who retrieved him from Georgia's Central State Hospital and took custody of him, he would still be hospitalized — or dead. "It only takes one person," Achord says, "to make a difference in someone's life."
