"At least now I know what I'm fighting, it's called depression," said Sam Charles, 23, about the last six months of counseling he's received from a therapist at a shelter for transitional youth here in the city.
Charles says he's felt like he's been dealing with depression most of his life, but it became incapacitating after he was shot in the leg in 2011 and the ER doctors at Sutter Health removed fragments but left most of the bullet inside.
"I didn't have health insurance," he explained.
Now he's enrolling in Medi-Cal, California’s name for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people, with the hope he can get regular treatment, and remove the bullet from his leg.
Charles is typical of some 21 percent of young adults who experience a severe emotional disturbance in their teen years, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet, only half who have mental disorders receive professional treatment.
Depression is the most common mental disorder in both young and old Americans, said Rusty Selix, executive director of the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies (CCCMHA).
Today, with Medicaid expanding under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and public and private health plans required to provide equal coverage for mental health and substance abuse disorders, as they do for medical and surgical care, an estimated 32 million people nationwide will have access to mental health services, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This includes young childless adults who earn less than $16,000 a year who, for the first time, are eligible for Medi-Cal coverage.
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