Mental patients expected to get insurance services

By Kim Jae-won

The health ministry said Wednesday that it will ensure that mentally ill patients get access to insurance services without discrimination by the end of next year, as part of its efforts to fight social prejudice and stigma associated with mental diseases.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said that it will revise the current Mental Health Law to ensure that insurance companies do not needlessly exclude mental diseases from their coverage.

The ministry said it will seek to revise the law by the end of this year.

“With the new regulation, we expect insurers to change their unreasonable rules which discriminate against people who suffered from light mental diseases, such as insomnia and depression,” said the ministry in a statement.

Local insurance companies usually decline to sell their services to people with mental diseases, drawing criticism from the public.

In 2011, the nation’s human rights agency advised them to set up new guidelines for mental diseases, raising concerns about how the possible dangers of mental health conditions have been exaggerated.

Social prejudice and stigma against mentally ill people is still prevalent in Korea. It is common practice for employers to demand the health records of jobseekers, including mental diseases. Those found to have a history of mental illness are rejected.

It is this biased attitude towards mental health that impedes effective treatment. Patients prefer to conceal their mental health status instead of consulting psychiatrists or counselors. Experts cite this as one of the reasons for the nation’s notoriously high suicide rate which marked 31.7 per 100,000 in 2011, the highest among members of the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and Development.