Breaking Down the Mental Health Care System with Marshall Moncrief

So you look at these different systems.

The hospitals aren't really doing a great job with this.

We're not getting the funding that we need.

The insurance are taking so much that a lot of the good providers are going into private pay models to be able to make more money, and that makes it so you do have that 90, 90-day, 120-day wait to see somebody on your panel.

But what about the school systems? I mean, they, they catch a lot of flack from some of the parents and families for not doing as much when it comes to managing mental health problems with the students.

And how much responsibility do you feel like the school really needs to bear on that? And then if they can't manage what's happening at the school, then where does that kid go from there?

Yeah.

It, it's a great question.

I, I wanna, I wanna button something up as we shift from hospital system to school system because so there's so many folks that, that, that work so hard in the hospitals and, and many of them are my friends and family.

And so I do wanna say you're accurate in saying the job isn't happening well there.

That is a truism.

However, it's important for folks listening to understand the emergency department was never built for that, and so it's the wrong environment for that human being to get the critical care they need.

And so we're starting to see crisis units, for example, start to manifest, which is more like people could think of that as a mental health urgent care.

That's a better system solution to the emergency department.

And that creates a nice segue into the school and your question around schools because, again, the school wasn't ever designed for mental health care, and yet the demand for mental health services and the need amongst kids and families is growing so much.

And where does a child spend the vast majority of their time? At school.

Yeah.

And they're underfunded.

The teachers are spread thin.

They've got online grades.

They're spending a lot of their class time telling everybody to put their phones away.

It's a mess.

And so what are your thoughts about how much responsibility really do they have here? Because in my monologue, I was saying, "Look, it's, it's not their job.

It was never designed to do this." Counselors were the people that helped you pick your classes and maybe helped you with your college applications.

Yeah.