Mental Health Care: 'Incipient Disaster'. (Public Policy Fails)

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PHILADELPHIA -- The nation's mental health system rests on the brink of "an incipient disaster" in which patients of nearly every economic station are denied care because of disastrous public policy decisions, American Psychiatric Association President Paul Appelbaum told the group's annual meeting.

"The moral obligation of a just society to provide for the needs of the less fortunate, as we would want their needs met in their places, teeters on a precipice," Dr. Appelbaum said in his inaugural address as the incoming president of the organization.

"Wishing that mental illness would not exist has led our policy makers to shape a health care system as if it did not …