Mental health care deserves full support

YOUR APRIL 25 editorial stated that the Senate

Domenici-Wellstone amendment to Sen. Nancy Kassebaum's health care reform proposal requiring health insurance coverage mental as well as physical ailments was laudable but untimely.

You equated it with increasing costs which the ''cost-conscious business community'' opposed.

Yet Corporate America has been the most effective advocate for the cost effectiveness of providing a full continuum of comprehensive benefits for mental illnesses.

In many ways, the Domenici-Wellstone amendment is modeled after the mental health and substance abuse benefit packages offered by major companies today.

Two studies released by the respected firms of Coopers & Lybrand and Milliman & Robertson in the last month show that the Domenici-Wellstone amendment will only increase premiums by about 3.2 percent or $45 per year.

In addition, Coopers & Lybrand found that mental health parity will actually save federal, state and county governments a combined total of $16.6 billion in public sector mental health costs.

Lack of treatment of mental illness and substance abuse costs the country billions in lost productivity. For example, a recent M.I.T. study estimates an annual cost of $11.7 billion in lost work days and $12.1 billion in other lost productivity from depression-related mental illness.

Enormous progress has been made in diagnosing and treating mental illness. Many neuroscientists believe their work will confirm that the vast majority of mental illnesses are actually physical illnesses of the brain.

We must stop separating medical or physical illness from mental illness and treat the whole person. Mental health treatment is cost-effective.

We must support mental health coverage for all insured Americans, and then work to insure all Americans.

Moya Atkinson

Baltimore

The writer is exective director of the Maryland chapter, National Association of Social Workers.