Integrating legal services to improve behavioral health, a challenge met from a different angle

The United States' current healthcare delivery system is not prepared to address the expanding behavioral health (BH) crisis without treatment of upstream social determinants that contribute to downstream BH exacerbations. Medical Legal Partnerships (MLP) utilize lessons from integrated BH to create efficiencies, augment the reach of the current BH workforce, network community resources, and likely provide BH prevention at the family unit. Payment policy changes are needed, however, to provide sustainable access to these services. The current surge of federal and state funding for BH care needs may provide the policy window necessary to sustainably fund MLP lawyers as a novel, high-impact, professional on the integrated healthcare team. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Dismantling structural addiction stigma in law: Policies for systematic change

Stigma is an under-recognized health malady that is both rampant for vulnerable communities and difficult to measure for researchers. Stigma has enormous and compounding negative health impacts, associated with lower education levels, employment and income, and poorer control of chronic conditions and illness. When stigma is embedded in the systems that govern daily life, it is considered structural stigma. Structural stigma in law has a particularly potent impact on the health and recovery of patients with substance use disorder (SUD) and addiction. Stigmatizing laws against individuals with addiction have a powerful role in downstream health, including opportunities for employment, access to health insurance, self-stereotyping, and reduced willingness to access recovery resources. Understanding and dismantling structural stigma in law, therefore, is a necessary component in comprehensively addressing SUD and addiction in collaboration with other evidence-based interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).