Discuss the arguments for and against applying a business model to mental health services. Businesses are motivated by profit and by providing customers with goods or services in exchange for capital. The business model when applying its relevance to mental health services emphasises the medical model and motivation for profit, through the application of widespread drug treatments throughout mental health services. Drug treatments are used as the most prevalent method of treatment for mental distress in the UK. This creates a paradox as although drug treatments are expected to help people, drug companies need a continuous supply of people using these drugs in order to succeed. If applying a business model to mental health services, customers may include individuals who take drug medication, people who prescribe medication (doctors and other mental health practitioners), and the state which pays for medication through the NHS. By nature business’s need to be efficient, systematic and practical and meet their customers needs in order to thrive however when the business model is applied to mental health services, this creates difficulty since there are three separate customers who have differing interests. The essay will begin by discussing the arguments against applying a business model to mental health services and will then look at some possible arguments for applying this model. The essay will also look at a functional business model, the quality assurance model (p47 K272 2004) and how this could be applied to mental health services.

The essay will begin by looking at the influence of power within mental health services and the detrimental effects caused by such power when applying a business model and will then go on to discuss the implications of the argument that many regulatory members of drug companies have vested interests within these companies. This section of the essay therefore argues against the business model for a number of reasons. Wallcroft comments (p44 K272 4 2004) that power is the reason why corporate profit nowadays fundamentally underpins mental distress due to the hierarchal nature of mental health services. There is a conflict of interests evident between mental health regulators who want to control the use of certain anti depressants and drug companies, as well as this, drug companies hold a great deal of power over practitioner’s decisions and judgements about medication. Drug companies influence practitioner’s decisions on what medicines to use by promoting their products in medical journals. Some arguments

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suggest that there is some collusive influence within the hierarchal circle of pharmaceutical companies and drug regulatory bodies which influences the decisions within this hierarchy, for example Brook (p45 K272 2004), once chief executive of MIND argues that many members of the Committee on Safety and Medication (CSM) have links with drugs companies and therefore the decisions of these members will be far from objective. Brook argued that the
CSM were failing to protect consumers from harmful doses of Seroxat, commenting that there was “Ext reme negligence and a clear dereliction of the MHRA's (medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency) duty to safe guard the well being of the British public”(p67
Reading 31). Labour party MP Paul Flynn rei terates this, arguing that the CSM and MHRA have a large proportion of members who have capital invested in pharmaceutical companies
(p67 Reading 31). Medawar (cited in Taylor K272 2004 reading p68) argues that regulating bodies do not listen to consumers, and are full of conflicts of interests and concealment that is fuelled further by the fact that there has never been a public enquiry into a drug disaster in the
UK. Campbell and Medawar (p44 K272 2004) argue that there is no monitoring of side effects of these drugs by an unbiased independent body, and argue that it becomes difficult for people to make informed decision based on