What does your monthly budget look like? For many of the 43.8 million Americans who experience mental illness in a given year, regular costs include more than the typical housing, groceries and transportation: they also include hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars for treatment.

These issues are being brought into focus as people discuss a growing mental health crisis for millennials. Under many insurance plans, behavioral care is likely to be provided out of network and cost insured patients more than other health care. Because of low reimbursement rates, mental health physicians are less likely to contract with insurance providers, driving up out-of-pocket costs for patients.

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The Affordable Care Act required mental health coverage to be comparable to physical health coverage. It also prevented insurance companies from determining insurance premiums based on a person’s health status through its “individual mandate,” which required everyone to purchase health insurance. Pre-Obamacare, mental disorders including anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia had been used to deny people coverage. Under the Trump Administration’s proposed budget, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would face a reduction of $688 million cut for 2019.

Six people spoke to MarketWatch about how their mental health affects their finances. (Some subjects withheld their last names for privacy reasons.)…….more here