Clinton floats proposal on mental health

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton on Monday rolled out a comprehensive plan to address millions of Americans coping with mental illness, pointing to the need to fully integrate mental health services into the nation’s health care system.

Clinton’s campaign released a multi-pronged approach to mental health care, aimed at ensuring that Americans would no longer separate mental health from physical health in terms of access, care and quality of treatment. “We’ve got to break through and break downthe stigma and shame. We’ve got to make clear that mental health is not a personal failing. Right now it’s our country which is failing people with mental health issues,” she said.

The Democratic presidential nominee’s agenda would focus on early diagnosis and intervention and create a national initiative for suicide prevention. If elected, Clinton would hold a White-House conference on mental health within her first year in office.

Clinton’s proposal would also aim to enforce mental health parity laws and provide training to lawenforcement officers to deal with people grappling with mental health problems while prioritizing treatment over jail for low-level offenders.

Clinton held a town hall meeting by telephone with stakeholders on Monday during a three-day fundraising spree in the Hamptons on New York’s Long Island. The policy rollout would overlap with a Clinton plan to address drug and alcohol addiction, which she campaigned on after hearing frequently about the problems from voters.

The federal government estimated in 2014 that about 43.6 million adults in the U.S. had mental illness in the past year, or about 1 in 5 adults age 18 and over. It estimated nearly 10 million adults suffered from serious mental illness.