Ginger Shupe, MD

The panelists examined how the scarcity of mental health specialists creates a cascading effect on care capacity, where patients who do not respond to initial primary care treatment face an increasingly narrow pool of expert clinicians equipped to manage complex, refractory cases.

The panelists highlighted how stigma, misdiagnosis, and the concentration of mental health care in primary care settings collectively contribute to significant delays in patients receiving appropriate psychiatric treatment for MDD, bipolar depression, and schizophrenia.