Should hospital emergency departments be used to treat mental health patients?

Should hospital emergency departments be used to treat mental health patients?

Introduction

Over the last 50 years, the treatment of mental illness has gone through a paradigm shift. The treatment has shifted from primary-based care to community-based care. The number of psychiatrists in the country has fallen, and the facilities for treating mentally ill patients are unavailable. This has led to increased use of emergency rooms to treat various mental health conditions such as substance use disorders, schizophrenia-induced psychosis, anxiety-induced panic attacks, and personality disorders. From a report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released in 2017, the number of individuals visiting hospitals due to substance use and mental health issues increased by 44 percent from 2006 to 2014 (Scutti, 2019). This has led to the overcrowding of the emergency department in hospitals, and it has increased the amount of time patients will spend at the hospital. There is also a shortage of beds in the emergency department. Therefore, hospital emergency departments should not be used to treat mental health patients because of the congestion caused, shortage of beds, security issues, and lack of training among the doctors and nurses. This paper will provide support for my thesis statement, followed by a reasonable counterclaim.

Why emergency departments should not be used to treat mental health patients 

The emergency department should not be used to treat mental health patients because it exposes other patients to danger. While waiting to be attended to in the emergency room, the patients with mental problems can become disruptive, thus making other patients feel unsafe. The patients can sometimes become combative, which poses a safety risk for staff, other patients, and themselves. In addition, waiting for a long time in queues for admission and diagnosis leads to poorer outcomes for patients with mental problems as they can become violent, affecting the safety of other patients (Angland & Casey, 2014). If a hospital decides to treat mental health patients in its emergency department, it should ensure that the patients are separated from other patients.

Most emergency departments are flooded with mentally ill patients, some waiting for admission, and some waiting for a diagnosis. The overflow of emergency departments has affected the quality of health care delivered to all patients. The number of mentally ill patients is very high, which prevents physicians from seeing non-psychiatric patients. The overcrowding is also associated with the lack of inpatient beds. The non-psychiatric patients are affected the most because it is difficult for them to get beds. The number of beds in hospitals needs to be increased to cater for the increasing number of mental health patients (Angland & Casey, 2014).

Consequently, doctors and nurses in the emergency department are not well trained to handle emergencies related to behavioral health. This affects the quality of health care mentally ill patients receive in the emergency department. The doctors prefer holding the patients until when they are moved to an inpatient bed. This has made many mentally ill patients get stuck for days or even weeks, thus leading to overcrowding in the emergency department (Innes, Morphet, & Munro, 2014).

Counterclaim

According to Zeller et al. (2014), there has been a significant improvement in the way mentally ill patients are treated over the last few years. Physicians and staff have been trained on how to deal with such kind of patients in the emergency rooms. It is not fair to treat mentally ill patients as if they are outcasts because some mental health conditions are legitimate and so they should be handled as medical emergencies. When an individual is having hallucinations or suicidal, it is not different from other medical emergencies. Therefore, patients with mental problems have a right to be evaluated and also treated just like a patient with diabetes, heart problems or asthma would be treated (Zeller, Calma, & Stone, 2014). Therefore hospital emergency departments should be used for treating mental health patients to ensure equal treatment of all patients, regardless of their health conditions. The emergency departments should be well prepared to manage mentally ill patients with less stress. They can achieve this by training all their staff on how to use various tools like suicide risk assessment to ensure that they work effectively with the patients.

Response to the counterclaim

Although it is unethical to discriminate against mentally ill patients, the safety of other patients should be considered. Mentally ill patients can become violent and injure other patients. The number of psychiatrists is continuously decreasing while the number of individuals with mental health problems is steadily increasing. This will affect how the emergency unit responds to such cases, even if they become prepared to manage the patients. The emergency unit will always become flooded due to the increasing number of mentally ill patients. It will be fair and safe if the hospitals create a separate wing for treating mentally ill patients, known as the emergency psychiatric assessment treatment and healing units (EmPath) (Rogers & Smith, 2015).

Conclusion

The emergency department should not be used to treat mental health patients. This is because it exposes non-psychiatric patients to danger as the patients may become violent. In addition, treating mentally ill patients in the emergency unit leads to overcrowding of the unit, which affects the quality of care offered to the patients. The congestion is associated with a lack of inpatient beds. Finally, the doctors and nurses in the emergency department are not well trained on how to treat and handle patients with mental problems, which affects the quality of care that the individuals receive.