Too much time has gone by since the idea of mental health stopped being shamed and turned into a taboo word. It’s been going on for a long period, but people are just starting to talk about it because so many people are talking about mental health problems like depression and paranoia.
The fact that the government of India added mental health to health insurance plans across the country wasn’t a big surprise. The Mental Healthcare Act of 2017 was signed into law on May 29, and it started to work the next day. The Act says that you must have health insurance that pays for the cost of treating mental illness.
The insurance plan must cover mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder. But none of India’s 33 insurance companies have come out with a product that addresses these worries.
Businesses are still trying to figure out how to deal with the gray areas of mental health, so the process is slow and in its early stages. Even so, people must understand a few things about mental health insurance before they go to a company to get coverage for themselves.
What are some symptoms of mental illness:
The Act says that a person has a mental illness if they have a significant disorder in their mood, starting to think, perception, orientation, or memory that makes it hard for them to act properly, make good decisions, or judge situations correctly, or if they can’t do normal day-to-day things. Since mental retardation is almost always caused by a brain that hasn’t grown enough or has stopped growing, the Act leaves it out of the definition.
What the Act consists of:
According to the World Health Organization, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) list of mental health problems would be considered to be covered. The ICD-10 and ICD-11 will tell us the rules in these situations. Both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are considered mental diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Someone with a mental disorder needs to go to the hospital. In that case, the coverage includes an evaluation and diagnosis of the person’s mental condition, as well as treatment, care, and rehabilitation for the person with their mental illness or suspected mental illness. With this method of medical care, you will have to stay in the hospital for 24 hours against your will.
What this law doesn’t cover:
Like any other health insurance plan, mental health insurance coverage has rules and limits. There are two reasons why mental health insurance coverage is not included in this case, and both apply to you. The policy does not include any mental illness in any way.
Second, the plan wouldn’t consider any results caused by drinking or taking drugs too much. Since the Act is still being written, it’s important to remember that some of these rules may change or be changed in the future.
What do people not understand?
Health insurance usually pays for care for psychological or neurological disorders, mental illnesses, and stress, in addition to treatment for physical problems. But depending on what kind of insurance the policyholder buys, the policyholder may only be covered for hospital stays or OPD (outpatient department) treatments. Hospitalization coverage on its own is not a given.
The rules say an insurer can’t differentiate between a patient’s physical and mental illnesses. Before you claim your insurance, you should make sure you’ve read all the fine print and understand what it covers and what it doesn’t. It is also unclear if the insurance policy will pay for any therapy sessions the insured might need as part of their healing.
Current plans for health care:
The insurance company may have to resubmit its current plans if the regulator says so. The price may go up, and if it does, the premium for mental health coverage will also go up. Plans already in place will cover mental illness to the extent the National Mental Health Care Act of 2017 says they must. When companies change their policies, you can expect the premium to go up if the coverage goes up.
Conclusion
It took a long time for mental health to get to the point where individuals can talk about it openly, but they’re finally there. People didn’t start talking about their mental health problems until celebrities such as Deepika Padukone and Ellen DeGeneres were told it was okay. Because the government is helping, India and a few other countries have chosen to disregard this social norm and deal with the situation.
From this vantage point, you can see that the whole world is changing in a good way. Let’s make a deal to check in on our mental health at least every year and choose our mental illness coverage to show intelligence and comprehension rather than just blindly following what everyone else does.
