America’s mental health crisis is important. No matter the color of their skin, their zip code, or their party, Americans are worried about this a lot, and for good reason. We all know it’s a huge problem. And it’s really easy to feel like it’s never going to get better because no one’s doing anything.
Until now. The Biden-Harris administration is announcing they are taking a bunch of new actions to tackle the nation’s mental health crisis. Everyone needs to know about this.
There’s $280,000,000 for mental health professionals in schools. There’s something called SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) that just announced more than $200 million to strengthen our 988 national suicide and crisis lifeline. It gets over 100,000 contacts a week.
Also, HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) has just launched findsupport.gov which is an online resource for Americans to find where they can get mental health support.
More Support
- A guide that makes it easier for schools to provide health services to students with Medicaid.
- Same with OSHA’s (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) new workplace stress toolkit and the Department of Labor’s Mental Health at Work Initiative.
- And the DoD’s (Department of Defense) new push to help more armed service members get mental health care.
- And the pilot program to give more mental health services to caregivers.
- And the program HRSA (Health Resources and Services Administration) is launching to reduce disparities in maternal mental health. A year ago they launched a 24/7 Maternal Mental Health Hotline: 1-833-TLC-MAMA.
And there’s a ton more, including lots of programs for youth mental health.
They are funding amazing programs. This is important. This is an area where the government can really help. And right now our government is trying to, unless, of course, the Republicans defund it.
This will absolutely save lives.