Mental health care benefits and perceptions of health insurance agents.

Many professionals play a role in evaluating and defining health service coverage in the current marketplace. It is useful to professional psychologists to understand how their perceptions of the current coverage of mental health services are similar to or different from those of other professionals. The authors examined the views of health insurance agents. Both psychologists and insurance agents agreed that, mental health benefits were adequate to effectively treat mild mental health problems, coverage was inadequate to treat major mental illness. Psychologists and insurance agents differed in their perceptions of whether patients and therapists used benefits unnecessarily. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)