Introduction
Policy development should pass through some analysis processes before drawing the levels of authenticity, credibility and legitimacy required for them to be rated as authoritative. Importantly, policy development follows many deliberations aimed at ensuring that they offer solutions to specific challenges in the society. In most cases, policy developers will engage in debates and stem out the merits and demerits of the policies that they seek to pass as per the demands of the existing challenges. Imperatively, public participation and sensitization is always a core exercise that is always critical to the entire exercise of policy development. In the current paper, problem identification, process definition, process analysis and implementation strategy will be discussed as the four main stages in the development of policies. Specifically, the discussion in this paper will be aimed at encouraging the other American States to follow California’s lead in legalizing the protection of persons with mental health issues, as established in the State of California’s Proposition 63.
Summary of Proposition 63
On 2 November 2004, the California state assembly passed the Mental Health Services Act, which became to be popularly referred as to Proposition 63. The major aim of the Act was to ensure that mental health services were guaranteed to all the Californian residents (Scheffler, 2005). Not only were the mental health services were supposed to be free, they were also supposed to be of the highest possible quality and that all mental health patients had to be treated with high levels of dignity all through the Californian societies. Proposition 63 came as an intervention to the prolonged suffering that individuals with mental health issues had undergone in the state of California.
The state considered that the mental health issues in the midst of its societies were complicating the health needs and demands of the Californian population. Ever since the passing of Proposition 63, California has been able to address the challenges that are perpetuated by mental health issues among its population. Apparently, by enhancing the easy access to medical services and facilities, the Mental Health Services Act has been able to improve the living conditions of people who, for many years, had been condemned to death. The current paper holds that the success of Proposition 63 should be replicated in all the states of America. As mentioned earlier on, four main aspects of policy development will be analyzed as per the instructions of the current question.
Problem Identification
The United States has some of the most worrying statistics as far as mental health issues are concerned. The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), an agency charged with the responsibility of studying mental health issues in the United States, published a series of findings based on the survey they completed recently. In a study titled ‘Mental Health by the Numbers’ NAMI reports that at least 1 in every 5 adult Americans, which translates to about 43.8 million people, suffer from episodes of mental illness in any given year (2016). Further, the report summarizes that 1 in every 25 American adults suffer from serious mental illnesses in any given years, which distracts them from performing one or more important activities in their lives. Besides, the findings that NAMI report of give an image of an American society that is in critical need of intervention measures to address the serious issue of mental health.
Unlike California, not many states have developed, passed and adopted laws with the intent of intervening and addressing the serious issue of mental health amongst their populations (Canady, 2014). Most states rely on existing federal policies that give general guidelines on the way individuals with mental health issues need to be treated within the public sphere in the American societies. Apparently, recent years have seen most states push to have full autonomy to the healthcare demands of the residents of specific states. Therefore, with the lack of proper policies and intervention measures to addressing mental health needs, and the apparent push to gain more control of healthcare demands, the states stand a major risk of contravening on the basic rights and freedoms of mental health victims. The apparent policy gaps on the way mental health needs should be addressed at the state level points out to a bleak future unless urgent measures are undertaken to remedy the prevailing situation.
Mental health experts concede that most American States lack the required structures to implement policies similar to Proposition 63 that has been successful in California. Apparently, most states tend to rely on other health and social welfare policies to address the challenge of mental health. Of significance is the fact that the lack of policies specific to addressing mental health issues is an impediment that comes with huge financial and social costs. Clearly, Proposition 63 has been effective in addressing the challenge of mental health in California in a way that no policy had ever been able to do in its past years.
Therefore, if replicated in other states, Proposition 63 could be a convenient solution to the complex challenges of mental health experts. However, the current paper holds that every states has its own needs and issues as relates to mental health issues (Enos, 2016). Therefore, the current paper recommends various developmental and implementation changes to ensure that the mental health issues that will be developed for each state will be effective as per the needs of each state. Thus, if every state was to address the mental health issues as extensively as California has managed, it is imperative that state authorities and legislative assemblies consider the specific issues that every state ought to address in regard to the state of mental health in every state.
Process Definition
The process to be followed for the states willing to develop policies similar to California’s Proposition 63 should take a multi-pronged approach. However, such a process should maintain the basic demands of developing policies and statutes in the individual states. Therefore, all the vital stakeholders in the policy development spectrum of the individual states must cooperate to ensure that the policy development is smooth and effective. After understanding these basic requirements in policy development, the current section will then outline and define the complex process that the development of a policy similar to that of Proposition 63 that has garnered immense success in California.
The policy development process should emphasize on the active participation of all the stakeholders required for the development of an effective mental health care law as is the case with proposition 63 in California. It is important that experts from the various sections of the healthcare fields that deal with mental health issues are involved in the entire policy development exercise. Although a political and legislative process, the input of mental health scholars and social welfare experts could go a long way in enhancing the success of the policy development exercise. The policy development venture must be extensive and exhaustive of all the required steps to ensure that the developed policy is not questioned on the basis of legality or any other aspect that could derail its implementation. Apparently, the policy should be free from of any formulation errors to ensure that it sails through the involved legislative assemblies without any form of distraction.
The policy development process should also involve public sensitization, an exercise whose main goal is to enhance public participation and public awareness in the development of the mental healthcare policy. Apparently, the policy being developed will be aimed at serving the public and it is morally and ethically right to ensure that the public is aware of the entire process. Public participation can be undertaken through the most effective means that have been seen to work conveniently in previous exercises.
For instance, the media should be utilized as a tool of increasing public awareness by running policy-specific programs and encouraging media users to raise any issues they may be holding regarding the development of the policy. It is important that all negative comments that will be raised at this are taken seriously and utilized to enhance the acceptability of the bill. The success of Proposition 63 in California can be attributed to the way the public was involved in its development (Olfson, 2016). Therefore, for its kind of success to be replicated across the rest of the states in the United States, it is important that public participation is enhanced at all the levels of development of the policy with emphasis being put on the negative issues that the public may raise.
Process Analysis
As it is clear, the entire policy development process requires the input of four main stakeholders. The state legislators, the scholarly and legal experts, the executive council of the states and most importantly, the public of the specific states that will be seeking to develop and adopt a policy similar to proposition 63 in California. The cooperation and inclusion of all the four stakeholders would mean the development of a widely accepted policy that will be a positive inclusion to the development of the society. The current section will include an extensive analysis of the entire policy development process in the bid for the other states to follow the lead of California in developing a policy to serve the interests of the individuals suffering from mental illnesses.
In addition to the involvement of all the stakeholders, whose roles will be discussed in this section, it is important to analyze the stages through which the policy should pass through before it passing for the legislation that will be adopted and implemented in the individual states like it is the case in California. The process of legislation should, in itself involve four main stages. First, it should have a problem identification stage. In this stage, it is important that those interested in developing the policy identify the policy gaps existing in the available policies to address the specific challenge. For instance, in the quest to develop a policy to bring sanity to the welfare programs aimed at protecting the mentally ill individuals in the American states. Identifying the problem entails studying the weaknesses of existing policies and then noting the specific issues that the new policy should address. Apparently, most states, as pointed out in the early sections of the current paper, lack proper policy provisions to address the mental health issues as California has done effectively with its Proposition 63 policy.
After identifying the problem, it is important to conduct a review of literature to ascertain the specifics regarding the exact issues that have not been addressed. The literature review process should be extensive and exhaustive in the sense that it should cover all the legal, social and political issues that surround the topic. The experts that will be involved will be critical at this stage because without them it would be almost an impossible task having to collect all the qualitative and quantitative data required to answer all the involved issues. It is important that the review of literature process takes a scholarly context so that the evidence attained could be effective in understanding all the issues that need to be addressed through the policy that will be developed.
The other stage that will need to be looked at in the development of the policy similar to Proposition 63 in the state of California should be the deliberation of the weaknesses that could arise in the event that the policy is passed. Apparently, it is critical that the involved team for developing the policy put in place measures to address a worst case scenario. In this case, a worst case scenario is in the event that the policy is passed but after its implementation fails to address the core issues that it was intended to offer solutions to as per the context of addressing mental health issues (Plagerson, 2014). Apparently, the policy development team should provide provisions that will enhance the ability of revising the policy in the event that its adoption and implementation fails to address any specific issue. Given the complex issues that a policy similar to Proposition 63 in the state of California is supposed to address, the American states that will choose to follow California’s lead should have to ensure that they provide room for adjustments to ensure that the policy develops to be versatile and inclusive of all the parameters of policy development.
It is important that the stakeholders identified are allowed to undertake their roles as indicated earlier on to avoid instances of conflict in the development of the policy. The legislators should find ways and mechanisms to practice their mandate of initiating the policy development process. They should cooperate with legal and scholarly experts to ensure that they develop policies that will be effective both on paper, adoption and implementation. The public is an important stakeholder that should be involved in every process in the policy development process. It should be understood that the public donates all the powers to the legislators who develop specific policies, hence their input into the process should be treasured. Additionally, the executive authorities of the individual states must be involved in the policy development because their assent to the developed policy will enhance the adoption of the policy. In this context, it is clear that all the four stakeholders and the multi-pronged process approach should be undertaken in an effective way to ensure that an effective policy is developed for the states aiming to implement a working mental health law.
Implementation Strategy
The implementation strategy of the policy ought to be done in phases. Apparently, there should be three main phases for undertaking the implementation of the policy. The phases will include a pilot phase, a partial implementation phase and then a general implementation phase. First, the pilot phase will include picking a specific location in the specific states to try out the implementation of the developed policy. The aim of the pilot phase will be trying out the effects of the new policy and ascertaining the issues of funding, legal issues and socio-political complexities that should be addressed to ensure that the entire process is effective if replicated on a larger scale.
The second phase, the partial implementation of the policy, should follow the pilot phase. Apparently, the pilot phase should yield a number of issues that ought to be addressed before the partial implementation phase is adopted. Upon deliberating and gaining the statistical and practical insight from the pilot phase, the policy implementers will then have to address the identified challenges. After their addressing of the identified issues, the partial implementation phase will then be undertaken to retest the new version of the policy within a higher level of the societies in the specific states. The aim of this phase will be to determine the level of challenges that will be expected in the event that the policy is implemented at a higher level, which will be the general, statewide implementation of the mental healthcare policy.
The general, statewide implementation of the policy will be undertaken after the elimination of all the issues that could otherwise derail the success of the policy are addressed in the two previous phases. To enhance the success of the policy, the policy developers will need to ensure that they allow avenues for easy adjustments to the policy and various revisions in the event that such a need arises. Since the policy implementation requires consistent and sufficient funding, the policy developers will have to lobby for both public and private funding. Just like in California’s Proposition 63, the policy developers in the other states will have to devise creative ways to generate the required amount of funding without constraining the resources of the individual states.
Conclusion
Mental health challenges are, without a doubt, derailing sustainable personal and public growth and development in American societies. Apparently, just a few states, specifically the state of California, have developed comprehensive policies to address mental health issues at the state level. The current paper identifies that the process to developing an effective and comprehensive policy like the one being implemented in the state of California, the other American states will need to follow a specific process that is outlined herein. In conclusion, the policy development process is complex, but if states and other policy developing agencies followed it to its final steps, there is no question that success will be attained and mental health issues will be addressed from the legal, political and social spectrums of the American societies.
References
Canady, V. (2014). MHA issues first assessment of states' ranking on mental health status, access.Mental Health Weekly, 24(46), 1-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mhw.30001
Enos, G. (2016). States seeing post-recession turnaround in mental health funding picture. Mental Health Weekly, 26(27), 1-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mhw.30673
National Alliance on Mental Illness. (2016). Mental Health by the Numbers. Nami.org. Retrieved 27 August 2016, from http://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers
Olfson, M. (2016). The rise of primary care physicians in the provision of us mental health care. .Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 41(4), 559-583. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/03616878-3620821
Plagerson, S. (2014). Integrating mental health and social development in theory and practice. Health Policy And Planning, 30(2), 163-170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czt107
Scheffler, R. (2005). Millionaires and mental health: proposition 63 in California. Health Affairs. http://dx.doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.w5.212
