Symposium on Mental health care insurance (24th Feb, 2014)
Importance of Mental health care insurance D. Dutta Roy ISI., Kolkata Number of new policies in health insurance is growing after privatization. It mainly covers general health insurance rather mental health care insurance (MHCI) though World Health Organization predicted 20% growth of mental illness in India. There is no systematic study on insurance needs of the beneficiaries. As a result, many mentally ill people are under-insured or non-insured. This causes difficulty to provide adequate mental health care through systematic insurance policies and schemes. On the other hand they are stigmatized by the society and sometimes they are abused. Abuse aggravates the severity of the symptoms. Mental health care system in India is plagued with lot of stigma still now. Major stigma is collective unwillingness of society to provide adequate financial assistance to the mentally ill people. Again, this causes serious sufferings on family members of the mentally ill. One good family is