WASHINGTON, DC – March 1: United States President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the United States Capitol on March 1, 2022 in Washington, DC. Among other issues, Biden talked about his administration’s plan to tackle mental health care in America.
Saul Loeb – Pool / Getty Images
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Saul Loeb – Pool / Getty Images
WASHINGTON, DC – March 1: United States President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the United States Capitol on March 1, 2022 in Washington, DC. Among other issues, Biden talked about his administration’s plan to tackle mental health care in America.
Saul Loeb – Pool / Getty Images
During his State of the Union address, President Biden announced an ambitious plan to address the country’s mental health needs, presenting it as an issue with bipartisan support.
“Give all Americans the mental health services they need. More people to whom they can turn for help, and full parity between physical and mental health care. if we treat it that way in our insurance.”
On Tuesday, the White House also released an information sheet provides insight into the administration’s strategy. It seeks to address a mental health crisis that has dragged on for years, but has only been made worse by the pandemic.
The plan focuses on ways to strengthen the system’s capacity and connect those in need with a continuum of care. It includes measures to expand the mental health workforce, an effort to establish a crisis response system to support the July 988 launch of crisis line, with a focus on mental health. Children’s mental health and recommendations spur insurers to improve their behavioral health coverage.
“We’re really excited about this focus,” Schroeder Stribling, President and CEO of the American Mental Health advocacy group. “We’ve been in need of a bold national strategy for a long time, and we’re just glad to see that the administration is seizing this opportunity. This is far from happening.”
Dr Thomas Insel said it was the first time since the Carter administration that the federal government had such an important leadership role in addressing mental health.
“I think this is a pivotal moment,” he said. “For the most part, the federal government has given in to mental health policy [and] services to the states. The federal government has been essentially inactive for 41 years, and the comments by Biden and this bulletin bring it back to the heart of mental health action. ”
The excitement of Insel and other supporters also extends to the specifics of the initiatives launched by the White House.
But they say the plan’s success depends on Congressional support for the regulations and funding proposals outlined by the administration.
It’s especially important that lawmakers consider long-term funding, Stribling said. “This cannot be a one-time intervention from the federal level,” Stribling said. “This has to be a long-term and widespread response.”
The mental health impact of the pandemic, Stribling adds, “will have a very long tail. And we need to remember that we’ve had a mental health crisis since before the pandemic. We’re talking about addressing the decades-old decline in mental health in our country.”
Insel’s focus on the president’s mental health crisis – and recent signs of bipartisan support in tackling it – is encouraging, Insel said: “”I think for the first time. For the first time in a very long time, we have both the White House and the Congress. As the president said, care and motivation for mental health care. “
Here are five highlights of the plan that its backers see as promising.
1. Focus on your child’s mental health
In his remarks Tuesday night, Biden specifically emphasized addressing the mental health needs of children, “children whose lives and education have been turned upside down” during the pandemic.
The plan proposes a number of efforts to limit the harmful effects of social media on children, including calling on Congress to ban the collection of too much data from children and advertising aimed at them. It also proposes expanding early childhood services and in schools to prevent young children’s mental health problems from getting worse.
Dr Tami Benton, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, said: “Focusing on children’s mental health is historic and necessary. “Prevention is the most effective and cost-effective way to prevent the onset of mental illness,” says Benton.
2. Building a Mental Health Workforce
The Biden plan highlights the need to build a network of qualified mental health professionals, citing a “severe shortage” of providers. Insel, who has a new book, says: Healing outline failures of the mental health care system and try to solve those problems.
But he noted that the plan proposes about $1 billion in new investments for the effort in the next budget, for measures like training, scholarships and debt forgiveness to encourage people to enter the field. .
Benton was impressed with a proposal to train and support paraprofessionals who can better help with mental health, that is, “those who have intervened in vulnerable individuals such as social service worker, child welfare worker” – as well as creating certifications for peer professionals. This would be “a very different way of seeing who is in charge of our nation’s mental health.”
“It’s a way to bring our community together. It’s a way to drive mental health, and it’s a way to really expand the workforce in ways that we haven’t talked about before. here,” she said.
3. Funding for permanent community behavioral health care centers
For several years, the federal government has provided grants to fund community mental health clinics – places where people can get 24/7 mental health care and use stimulants in their local community. Now the administration wants to permanently fund these in the next budget.
“It’s a long-term investment to create a federally funded public mental health network,” says Insel. “We haven’t had that since the 1970s and 1980s.” “It’s a big, huge change.”
4. Crisis care support
This summer will see the launch of mental health crisis hotline – reached by dialing 988. The Biden administration has provided $180 million to support local crisis staffing and crisis response assistance centers. Now, they’re proposing more funding for local crisis center staff and a “crisis care process: someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere for every American in need.” crisis must go.”
“Emergency lines and crisis-based services will be an addition to the many families who are coming to seek urgent care,” says Benton. Patients in crisis are likely to avoid going to the emergency room, she says, if they have someone to talk to who can help them understand the problem they’re having, access resources or even go to the hospital. their homes to spread the crisis.
“There is a large evidence base that supports the effectiveness of those interventions,” she said. “It’s great to see an investment and again, training people in their place and keeping families together and in their homes.”
5. Make sure insurance covers mental health
Since 2008, a federal law urges health insurers to cover mental health conditions at the same rate they pay for other health problems. However, Insel said enforcement is carried out by states and patients can often struggle to get needed mental health care. The Biden administration has said it wants to require all health plans to cover “robust behavioral health services”.
“This is another great example of the federal government stepping up,” says Insel. A specific request from the White House is that “every individual with commercial insurance will get a behavioral health exam three times a year with no copay. That’s a pretty big step forward,” Insel added.
