She was repeating, 'They made me do it. Eventually her sister, whose name the family does not want published, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This week, the surgeon general of the United States will shed a powerful light on the sorts of illnesses that affect families like James's in the office's first-ever comprehensive report on mental health. New drugs and therapies have vastly improved the outlook for the 5 million or so people with the most severe mental illnesses. Ill. The problem is that too often people who need the most care are not getting it.
Mental illness is indeed among the most poorly treated of all diseases.
A 1998 study of more than 700 patients, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and led by Lehman, found that more than half of patients with schizophrenia received substandard care. It also found that more than 70 percent of patients received the wrong dose of antipsychotic medicines. Such problems arise in part because many physicians still prescribe older medications or are untrained in the use of newer ones, or because patients and their families, frustrated by past disappointments, don't seek the latest treatment. These shortcomings affect an audience far beyond mentally ill patients and their families. Untreated mental illness has been a factor in countless episodes of public violence, including the July 1998 shooting deaths of two police officers at the U.S. Capitol and the death earlier this year of a young woman pushed in front of a New York City subway train.