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Even though the stigma surrounding mental illness is slowly being deconstructed, mental illnesses are still undertreated everyday. In a new study, researchers examined how accessible psychiatric appointments are in Boston, Chicago, and Houston. They found that people, even those with private insurance, have a hard time getting an appointment.

"This study poignantly illustrates how difficult it can be for patients to obtain needed mental health care. Insurance companies need to ensure that the lists of providers they offer patients contain accurate phone numbers as well as practices that are actually accepting new patients," lead author Monica Malowney, M.P.H., said. "How likely is it that a severely depressed person would persevere through so many obstacles?"

For this study, the researchers pretended to be patients, who had BCBS (Blue Cross Blue Shield) PRO Insurance, Medicare or were willing to pay out of pocket, and attempted to get appointments with individual psychiatrists. There were a total of 360 phone calls, with 120 of them made in each city.

Overall, only 26 percent of the calls were successful in scheduling an appointment with a psychiatrist. The callers that had BCBS Pro insurance and those who were willing to pay out of pocket had a slightly easier time getting an appointment in comparison to people with Medicare. However, the difference was not that significant.

For the most part, getting an appointment was extremely difficult. 15 percent of the psychiatrists' practices were full and not taking in new patients. An additional 10 percent of practices were not seeing general adult outpatients. In 23 percent of the cases, the psychiatrists' office did not return phone calls. 16 percent of the phone numbers listed for the psychiatrist were incorrect.

The researchers concluded that in metropolitan areas, getting treated for mental illness could be very difficult and inaccessible. The team is calling for more measures to be taken to ensure that people suffering from mental illnesses have access to treatment.

"Insurers provide lists of providers, but they are filled with names of individuals whose practices are full or who don't bother to return phone calls or with phone numbers that are simply wrong. Calling for a psychiatric appointment and reaching a McDonald's? That is totally unacceptable," senior author Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, an attending psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School faculty member, said according to the press release. "Insurance companies care more about turning a profit than actually providing care. Everyone, even individuals with supposedly excellent insurance, has a hard time accessing psychiatric care, so what is needed is a comprehensive overhaul of psychiatric care in the context of a thoughtful single-payer system that allocates resources according to our nation's medical needs."

The study, "Availability of Outpatient Care from Psychiatrists: A Simulated-Patient Study in Three Cities," was published in the journal, Psychiatric Services.