Having access to mental health care can be challenging, especially if you’re living in an area with very few mental health specialists. This can be especially troubling in rural areas, which already have issues attracting both medical and non-medical professionals because of the lower wages and higher cost of living compared to larger cities. However, lawmakers in Illinois have taken action by passing legislation that addresses the shortage of mental health practitioners in rural areas, and makes it easier for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to renew licenses and practices. 

Lack of accessibility in Rural Communities

Although more people across America are receiving mental health care, there are still millions of Americans who do not receive treatment. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than 90% of the nation’s licensed therapists practice in urban areas, and approximately 60% of all rural counties lack even one practicing mental health specialist. 2021 data from Mental Health America suggests 57% of adults with a mental illness receive no treatment, and that over 26 million individuals experiencing a mental illness are going untreated. Lack of access is one major reason why. It can be extremely difficult for those living in rural areas or communities without much nearby support.

In addition, unemployment and lack of insurance affect rural areas at a higher rate which makes it hard for people seeking treatment unable to afford the care they need. Unfortunately, rural Americans experience higher depression and suicide rates, which make access to high-quality mental health care all the more important. 

A report issued by an Illinois task force on behavioral health identified Illinois has a 480-to-1 ratio of population to mental health professionals in rural communities. In addition, this data recorded:

• 93.7% of rural hospitals are in designated mental health shortage areas
• 81 out of 102 Illinois counties have no child and adolescent psychiatrists

But all hope is not lost as lawmakers have taken note and passed legislation in May 2022 to address the mental health shortage and increase access to high-quality mental health care. Geode Health in Westmont is one such mental health practice that is reaching out to residents in rural areas to let them know that licensed professionals are available to help.

What the new law provides

The new law, which was passed by bipartisan members of both chambers, could help alleviate shortages. The law provides financial relief to health care professionals who work and practice in rural areas around Illinois. It expands the eligibility for student loan repayment assistance, as well as expands the places where professionals who received financial aid can work, including privately-owned rural health clinics and hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid. This is a strong step towards improving access for those who need mental health care. More and more mental health services are expanding, like Geode Health, which will soon serve the greater Chicagoland area, and help alleviate the health care professional shortages.

Why this matters

The prevalence of mental illness is significantly higher for people living in rural areas and small towns compared with those living in cities and metropolitan suburbs. More specifically, certain conditions like depression and alcoholism are more prevalent in rural populations. The current economic environment also leads to a greater risk of depression and anxiety among those living in rural communities. Before this legislation passed, many states have been forced to cut mental health funding over time due to financial constraints. It’s important to understand how these factors affect our nation’s most vulnerable populations so that we can bring about positive change.

This new law is a bold way to bring mental health care to rural counties in need. Mental health care is often overlooked and underfunded—but it’s just as vital as any other kind of medical treatment. And while many people are aware of mental illness, there are still stigmas attached to it that prevent people from seeking help. At Geode Health, we want to educate the communities in which we serve to overcome these stigmas and provide adequate resources for those who need them most.

Sources:

https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/politics/state/2022/06/10/illinois-law-aims-give-rural-health-care-providers-financial-aid/7570112001/

https://namiillinois.org/a-call-for-better-mental-health-care-in-rural-illinois/

https://www.illinois.gov/news/press-release.25035.html

https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/home/practice-management/health-disparities-in-rural-america-current-challenges-and-future-solutions/3/

https://mhanational.org/issues/2021/mental-health-america-access-care-data

Imagine tiny crawling bots moving from page to page, website to website, checking, understanding, and indexing information. That’s how Google and other search engines find the answers to users’ questions. It is also basically how Google finds your website.

However, this basic idea is not as easy as it looks. You need to optimize your website to help Google do its work. Using SEO tactics can help you with website optimization, but you must begin with a technical SEO audit before anything else.

What Is a Technical SEO Audit?

Digital Authority Partners said websites need a technical SEO audit to check all their technical aspects and ensure that it is following SEO best practices. The technical parts of a website refer to all factors that Google and other search engines use for indexing and ranking.

What Does Technical SEO Audit Do?

A technical SEO audit ensures your website’s technical aspects are updated and relevant. An updated site is optimized for search. Thus, you won’t miss out on valuable online traffic. Here are more reasons to begin a technical SEO audit. 

• Check if the content is visible.

An audit finds out if your website is visible to your target audience and search engine crawlers. It’s checking the different parts of your website, including your homepage, product pages, landing pages, and category pages.

Audit checks for unrenderable links, web content, and navigation bar components. If these elements are problematic, bots won’t see them also. An audit also examines if the cached version of your website has missing content elements or if there is incorrect page rendering. These elements affect how bots find and index your pages for easy retrieval.

• Look into canonicalization

If there are many versions of a web page, Google will choose one to index. The URL that Google selects will be canonical, and this is what the search engine will show when a related keyword is searched.

The canonicalization process is triggered by signals like canonical tags, duplicate pages, redirects, internal links, and sitemap URLs. Canonicalizing, pages into a master version helps search engines recognize that these URLs are not duplicates.

You can improve indexing and allow search engines to understand your website better by canonicalizing pages. Canonicalization is therefore crucial in a technical SEO audit.

• Consider Manual Actions

You can find Manual Actions from Security & Manual Actions on the left navigation panel of the Search Console. Manual Actions on a page or site mean that a Google human reviewer has found that your website violates the Webmaster Quality Guidelines and has imposed a penalty against your website.

You may not know if your website is underperforming or has violated Google’s quality guidelines. So check Manual Actions reports. Such reports often cover illegal attempts to exploit Google’s search index. These reports may also be due to black-hat optimization strategies like keyword stuffing.

If you think a Manual Actions report was an error, you can always request a review. A request can take a few days to complete, but you can override a Manual Action if proven erroneous. 

• Check the site’s mobile-friendliness

A technical SEO audit examines your website’s performance on mobile. A well-designed version of your website on mobile is crucial for long-term relevance.

A website that is “mobile-friendly” covers a variety of factors, but one way to quickly find this out is to use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool. You may also check your website on a smartphone to determine its loading time, clickable components, full webpage viewing, etc.

• Check Sitemap Visibility

Use sitemaps for quick SEO indexing. Your sitemap provides information about your web pages and web files and the relationship between these components. It lists your pages more efficiently so that Google can easily crawl and index your content.

An outdated site map can negatively affect your rankings, so always make sure your sitemaps are regularly or automatically updated with no redirects, non-canonical URLs, and 404s.

• Consider Your Schema Markup

An audit checks for any structured data and ensures these are working perfectly. Structured data is also known as schema. It improves how your website appears on SERPs and can help boost your click-through rate.

You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to check schema markup and make it work for you. This tool will determine any issues that can affect schema use in SERPs. You may also check schema markup on Search Console’s Enhancements by including “Unparsable structured data” in your reports. Negative reports mean that your schema is working and there are no issues.

Why Perform a Technical SEO Audit?

Whether you’re hiring an SEO agency or you want to examine your website performance, a technical SEO audit puts you on the right track. An audit will reveal your website’s weak and strong technical points allowing you to formulate the best strategy in the future. Here are more benefits of a technical SEO audit.

• Easy Indexing: Technical SEO audits improve how Google and other search engines index your site for easy retrieval during a search.
• Diagnose SEO Concerns: Audits determine issues affecting how your site is optimized for search. You should deal with any problems at once.
• Improves Your Ranking on SERPs: With an optimized website, you can guarantee higher rankings on the search and improved visibility for your business, products, services, and brand. To check the ranking of your website in search engines, you can use the Rank tracker tool by Sitechecker. One of the advantages of this tool is the constant monitoring of SERP positions.
• Improves Website Organization: An audit gives you a clear idea about your website performance and organizes data to benefit your audience and customers.

Final Words

As much as possible, conduct regular technical SEO audits to update your website’s performance. With an optimized website, you’re helping search engines find you online and your customers to find your business, services, and products. When prioritizing technical SEO, you can promote your brand with better visibility on search engine results pages. 

Copyscape Results

What we are used to in Nigeria and other “developing” democratic governments around the world is the executive using their executive powers to unleash havoc on the citizenry or anybody that is found to be against the government. It is common in Nigeria for the Mr. president or the Mr. governor to arrest and detain an opposer of his government arbitrarily without following the due judicial procedures but not in this modern age could we ever imagine that a judge; a senior judicial officer, a custodian of the rules of the land, the last hope of the common man, the gatekeeper of rules and regulations of the country will use her judicial power to unleash horrendous mayhem on a lawyer or any other person over personal grievances. 

This is the attestation to the assertion of an old English historian, Lord Acton after studying humans and how they act when they are in a place of power and authority, he hissed and said; power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Her Lordship has become a record breaker. She has smashed the record and set a new record that a judicial officer of her caliber has the power to prosecute and detain a lawyer because of mere disagreement.

This is nothing other than abuse of power and abuse of office, maybe drunk with her judicial power that she had no regard for the judicial procedure of trying a lawyer accused of contempt of court (if we are to even go by her accusations against the lawyer). 

She ordered his arrest and sentenced him to one month of committal in prison without obeying the constitutional and natural rule of fair hearing, giving the accused the chance to be heard. If that is not flaunting the laws that she as a judicial officer is meant to uphold then I don’t know what that is.
She secondly refused to make available the judgment of which she sentenced the lawyer, also breaching the constitutional rule of making judgment available for the accused so the accused can have what to appeal on.

She has been accused also of secretly varying her judgment as in recent days the lawyer was transferred from the previous prison he was sent to another prison of maximum security. 

She subjected a lawyer; a co-minister in the temple of justice, to be treated as a common criminal over a mere disagreement. 

The Nigerian Bar Association has applied diplomacy and even begged her Lordship to show mercy but it all fell on deaf ears. 

We can all assume that maybe her Lordship had had enough from the lawyer to have made her hardened her heart against the lawyer and every other diplomatic move from other interested parties including that of the NBA and some other senior lawyers but Whatever grievance her Lordship has against the lawyer or whatever point her Lordship wants to prove is it enough for her Lordship to sacrifice and sabotage her judicial career in her prime and rubbish the legacy she has built all her life over this. 

Everyone is watching and imagining what will happen next, what will be the fate of her Lordship as this case goes on.

Let’s all watch and pray!

Inibehe Effiong: A lawyer can be sent to prison by a judge for contempt