Clinicians and Mental Health Policy: An Inside Perspective

Extract

In Washington these days, there is no shortage of people willing to dispense advice about what clinicians can do to impact national mental health policy. The advice and comments that follow reflect one perspective, but it is not that of a psychiatrist, a psychopharmacologist, a nurse, a social worker, or a member of any medical profession. Rather, it is the view of one of the legions of Washington bureaucrats with fancy titles and delusions of grandeur. The difference is that this view happens to have a chemical basis—it comes from a person with a decade of experience dealing firsthand with both manic-depressive illness and mental health policy.