A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Inequities

Abstract: In 2022, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 59.3 million adults experienced some form of mental illness and 48.7 million people aged 12 or older experienced substance use disorder (SUD) in the past year. The significant inequities in access to health care services experienced by people with mental health conditions and SUD are rooted in policies, practices, and beliefs that reflect long-standing stigma, bias, and unequal treatment. This panel will examine responses to individual, structural, and systemic forms of bias and unequal treatment that impact healthcare experiences and outcomes for individuals with these conditions from the disciplinary perspectives of law, public health, bioethics, nursing, and medical humanities. The first panelist, an expert in bioethics and law, will set the stage by discussing how mental health policy in the US could be reframed to advance collective mental health while also targeting populations with disparate experiences of trauma. The second panelist, an expert in nursing, bioethics, and the law, will examine the federal approach to controlled substance prescribing policies, including the expansion to criminalize even good faith prescribing decisions. The third panelist, an expert in medical humanities, will highlight state law issues through changing state regulation, public (mis)understanding, and other developments relating to the tele-induction of buprenorphine for SUD. The fourth panelist, an expert in law and disability theory, will provide a framework for recognizing and challenging specific forms of algorithmic discrimination that harm people with SUD, chronic pain, and other stigmatized conditions as disability discrimination.