AccScience Publishing / GHES / Volume 2 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.36922/ghes.3408
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Evaluation of mental health law 21,331 in Chile

Gonzalo Leyton1,2*
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1 School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
2 Department of Studies, Superintendence of Health, Santiago, Chile
Submitted: 11 April 2024 | Accepted: 17 July 2024 | Published: 29 October 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

This study evaluates whether the implementation of law 21,331 on mental health (MH) affected financing in Chile’s private health-care system. The effects of effective financial coverage and the acceptance rate of sick leaves are analyzed. The results show increased coverage in plans without coverage constraints in MH concerning those with restricted coverage; however, differences imply a lower effective coverage in MH services concerning physical health services. Regarding sick leaves, the practice of refusing and reducing sick leaves for mental disorders increased, further deepening the gap concerning other diagnostic groups. Notably, medical consultations by telemedicine have allowed significant increases in coverage, including for MH. Analyzing the differences by gender shows that there is less financial coverage for women than for men regarding MH services. Furthermore, women experience a higher proportion of rejected and reduced sick leaves than men. Law 21,331 works toward the World Health Organization recommendations in this area; however, a significant gap remains between the effective financial coverage of MH services compared to physical health services and the resolution of sick leaves for mental disorders versus other diagnostic groups.

Keywords
Mental health
Mental health law
Financing
Evaluation
Financial coverage
Sick leaves
Law 21
331
Private health-care system
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that he has no competing interests.
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Global Health Economics and Sustainability, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4570 Published by AccScience Publishing