Bipartisan legislation introduced on Friday by U.S. Reps. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Doris Matsui (D-CA) would increase funding for community mental health services to expand and strengthen care provided.
The Expand Excellence in Mental Health Act, H.R. 4569, would fund mental health planning grants in 24 states. The grants were initiated under the Excellence in Mental Health Act that was introduced by Lance and Matsui and signed into law in 2014.
“This measure is directly tackling one of the most significant mental health challenges — access,” Lance said. “The Expand Excellence in Mental Health Act will enable more states to experiment with the tools and practices to fix our nation’s broken mental health care system. By expanding the law to include more states, we encourage greater collaboration and testing in finding out what solutions work, how best we care for those who need treatment and what we can do to keep people safe. The Excellence in Mental Health Act is the most significant work Congress has done on mental health care. We should expand it and keep the momentum going.”
Under current law, funding for mental health planning grants is restricted to eight states. In 2015, 24 additional states were selected to work with community mental health centers, veteran clinics and other mental health organizations to draft state programs that meet the requirements of Certified Community Behavioral Centers.
“Expanding the Excellence in mental health demonstration project would be an important milestone in our efforts to tackle comprehensive mental health care reform,” Matsui said. “The Expand Excellence in Mental Health Act will give more states the opportunity to benefit from high quality, evidenced-base and community-driven mental health care that patients and families so desperately need. We must bring mental health up to a level playing field with the rest of our nation’s health care system, and incentivizing states to improve the delivery of mental health care at the local level through this demonstration project will help us achieve this goal.”
The bill, introduced on Friday, would build on the Excellence in Mental Health Act’s original goal to improve mental health standards, to fully fund community services and to offer mental health services like 24-hour crisis psychiatric care, counseling and integrated services across the country.
Linda Rosenberg, the president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, called the legislation a “critical step forward in making mental health and addiction care available to every American in need.”
The Expand Excellence in Mental Health Act is supported by more than 50 mental health organizations.