May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to remind the public that mental health is just as important to our wellbeing as physical health. Over the past few decades, we have made meaningful strides in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental illness and highlighting the importance of mental health services for everyone. While the journey isn’t over, the progress is real: shame is giving way to understanding and lives are changing for the better.
But this year, we need to more directly address proposed and actual cuts to federal health programs that support mental health services. These cuts don’t just trim budgets, they eliminate vital services that our friends, families and communities rely on to be healthy and strong. The need for mental health services continues to grow, and these funding cuts could not come at a worse time.
Some federal health programs have already been cut.
Like any other health condition, mental health challenges only worsen when left untreated. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Community Health Services Block Grant program provides flexible funds to states for substance abuse treatment, crisis interventions, COVID support and other community-based treatment. The programs and services funded by the grant, which was recently eliminated, have been a lifeline for people in rural communities and other underserved areas where access to treatment is often limited.
Even needed job-training programs such as the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program was eliminated. The funding was intended to increase the number of people who work in the mental and behavioral health profession.
Medicaid cuts will have the biggest impact.
Medicaid is a cornerstone of mental health care in the U.S., providing mental health support to nearly 30% of the estimated 52 million nonelderly adults. It supports everything from outpatient therapy to inpatient psychiatric treatment. Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act dramatically increased access to mental health services, especially in states that adopted the expansion. Proposed cuts or policy changes could unravel much of this progress.
The people who will be most immediately hurt by these cuts are low-income individuals, children, older adults, people with disabilities and communities of color. Without Medicaid or federally funded programs, many will face impossible choices: forgo medication, skip therapy, or rely on emergency rooms during a crisis.
When access to preventive care is reduced, individuals, families and communities face overcrowded emergency rooms and longer wait times for emergency care, higher premiums and out-of-pocket expenses and longer wait times to see mental health providers.
Contact your elected leaders.
We have made so much progress understanding, destigmatizing and treating mental illness. Now more than ever, we need policies that strengthen, not weaken, access to mental health services for everyone. Our lives are all intertwined, and accessible health care is both right and smart for all our communities. Federal and state leaders need to hear from you about the urgency and importance of Medicaid funding, particularly for mental health.
Send a message now, and feel free to personalize it with your own experience and viewpoint.