Mental Health America is in support of President Biden's plans to address the nation's mental health and substance abuse crisis, part of his "unity agenda" mentioned in his State of the Union speech Feb. 7.
"Mental Health America applauds President Biden for highlighting mental health and substance use in last night's State of the Union and for issuing an accompanying fact sheet detailing upcoming guidance, regulations, and programs that will significantly expand access to quality care," MHA said in a Feb. 8 news release shared with Becker's. "We are grateful for the bipartisan commitment to advancing these priorities as evidenced by the legislation that has been passed by Congress and implemented by the Administration."
The unity agenda includes the following mental health initiatives:
- Further promote youth mental health by increasing access to school mental health services and address social media harms.
- Reduce veteran suicide rates and expand access to peer support services for veterans.
- Increase access to treatment for substance use and make it easier to prescribe medications for substance use as part of routine healthcare.
- Removal of the X-waiver, which used to be required for physicians to prescribe buprenorphine to treat substance use disorder, to make it easier to access life-saving medications for substance use conditions.
- Expand affordable health coverage and treatments.
- Address social determinants, implement police reform and racial justice.
- Create accountability for insurers to provide access to behavioral healthcare by releasing a parity rule.
- Allow states to use Medicaid to fund mental health and substance use care prior to a person's discharge from a jail or prison.
- Diversify the behavioral health workforce and increase access to mobile crisis intervention and 988 hotline services to ensure a mental health, and not a law enforcement, response to crisis.