15 Simple Ways to Enjoy Your Life

Many of us assume that we need to make drastic changes to our habits, routines and/or bank balances to be happy. In reality, however, that's not the case. Often, we already have everything we need to enjoy life-it's just a question of prioritizing what's really important. Here are 15 simple ways you can enjoy your life more, starting today!

1. Focus on yourself
Other people will always be on hand to offer up their opinions and advice. Ultimately, however, it's we, and we alone, that have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

2. Make time to relax
Making time to relax and reconnect with ourselves leaves us better equipped to deal with more challenging periods.

3. Avoid the news
It's all too easy to get sucked into public drama, online and offline. Trust that if something important happens, you'll know about it. Otherwise, save yourself energy and spend your time on something more worthwhile.

4. Nurture your positive relationships
Make time to nurture the positive relationships you have with friends and family. Identify the people who lift you up and focus your energy on them.

5. Meet new people
Community is one of the most important needs we have. Making a consistent effort to meet new people helps us fulfill that need and introduces us to new ideas and perspectives.

6. Explore new places
New places and cultures offer a different perspective on the world and add a healthy dose of inspiration and possibility to our lives.

11 Points For Mental Health Care Reform

Due to greater understanding of how many Americans live with mental illnesses and addiction disorders and how expensive the total healthcare expenditures are for this group, we have reached a critical tipping point when it comes to healthcare reform. We understand the importance of treating the healthcare needs of individuals with serious mental illnesses and responding to the behavioral healthcare needs of all Americans. This is creating a series of exciting opportunities for the behavioral health community and a series of unprecedented challenges mental-health organizations across the U.S. are determined to provide expertise and leadership that supports member organizations, federal agencies, states, health plans, and consumer groups in ensuring that the key issues facing persons with mental-health and substance use disorders are properly addressed and integrated into healthcare reform.

In anticipation of parity and mental healthcare reform legislation, the many national and community mental health organizations have been thinking, meeting and writing for well over a year. Their work continues and their outputs guide those organizations lobbying for government healthcare reform..

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY

1. Mental Health/Substance Use Health Provider Capacity Building: Community mental health and substance use treatment organizations, group practices, and individual clinicians will need to improve their ability to provide measurable, high-performing, prevention, early intervention, recovery and wellness oriented services and supports.

2. Person-Centered Healthcare Homes: There will be much greater demand for integrating mental health and substance use clinicians into primary care practices and primary care providers into mental health and substance use treatment organizations, using emerging and best practice clinical models and robust linkages between primary care and specialty behavioral healthcare.

3. Peer Counselors and Consumer Operated Services: We will see expansion of consumer-operated services and integration of peers into the mental health and substance use workforce and service array, underscoring the critical role these efforts play in supporting the recovery and wellness of persons with mental health and substance use disorders.

4. Mental Health Clinic Guidelines: The pace of development and dissemination of mental health and substance use clinical guidelines and clinical tools will increase with support from the new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and other research and implementation efforts. Of course, part of this initiative includes helping mental illness patients find a mental health clinic nearby.

Who's Paying For Health Care?

America spent 17.3% of its gross domestic product on health care in 2009 (1). If you break that down on an individual level, we spend $7,129 per person each year on health care...more than any other country in the world (2). With 17 cents of every dollar Americans spent keeping our country healthy, it's no wonder the government is determined to reform the system. Despite the overwhelming attention health care is getting in the media, we know very little about where that money comes from or how it makes its way into the system (and rightfully so...the way we pay for health care is insanely complex, to say the least). This convoluted system is the unfortunate result of a series of programs that attempt to control spending layered on top of one another. What follows is a systematic attempt to peel away those layers, helping you become an informed health care consumer and an incontrovertible debater when discussing "Health Care Reform."

Who's paying the bill?

The "bill payers" fall into three distinct buckets: individuals paying out-of-pocket, private insurance companies, and the government. We can look at these payors in two different ways: 1) How much do they pay and 2) How many people do they pay for?

The Cons of Group Health Insurance

Group Health Insurance Cons

• Group health insurance can be more expensive than individual health insurance. ln fact, if you don't factor in the employer's contribution towards premiums, then individual plans are almost always more affordable than group plans. However, as we discussed earlier, not every one can qualify for an individual plan.
• What happens if your employment is terminated (by you or your employer)? Yes, you will likely have some benefit continuation rights (through COBRA or state continuation programs), but these benefits can be very expensive and the term limited. So, eventually, you either have to secure another job with benefits, an individual health plan (assuming you are insurable), or possibly join a government health insurance program for the uninsured (if you are not insurable).