At his blog Our Health Policy Matters, health consultant Paul Gionfriddo writes that public officials often use suicide data as a proxy for the seriousness of mental health problems. But those rates really don’t give a good picture, he argues, since there are people who have mental illness who don’t commit suicide, or don't succeed.
But one happy byproduct of the Affordable Care Act that has gotten little attention, he says, is a change in the way mental-health treatment is measured and paid for to emphasize quality of care.