Efforts spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to reform the nation’s mental health system and fight drug abuse were included this week in the Senate-approved 21st Century Cures Act.
The sweeping 21st Century Cures Act included mental health reforms based on bipartisan legislation coauthored by Cassidy with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the Mental Health Reform Act of 2016.
The bill outlined steps to integrate physical and mental health care, enhance transparency and enforcement of mental health parity, establish new early intervention programs, and strengthen suicide prevention efforts.
“The 21st Century Cures Act marks a giant step forward in fixing our broken mental health system,” Cassidy, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said. “It institutes comprehensive mental health care reform and makes resources available to the millions that have been previously denied treatment due to a lack of access.”
Cassidy and Murphy hosted dozens of roundtables with families, mental health professionals and advocates to draft reforms that would expand federal resources and improve coordination for mental health and substance abuse treatment programs in the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015.
The lawmakers then worked with U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, and Patty Murray (D-WA), the committee’s ranking member, to draft an updated version of the bill that was included in the 21st Century Cures Act.
“I want to thank all those who helped make mental health a priority in Congress, but I especially thank my colleague Sen. Chris Murphy,” Cassidy said. “We have been working together to fix our country’s broken mental health system since day one. Without him and the bipartisan effort he has brought to this legislation, we would not be here today. I urge the president to sign this bill and help the millions of individuals and families affected by mental health become whole.”
Under Cassidy and Murphy’s provisions, a new National Mental Health Policy Laboratory would be established to fund innovative grants that find new models of care and to fund demonstration grants to help scale effective models.
Additionally, successful grant programs like the Community Mental Health Block Grants and state-based data collection efforts would be reauthorized, and leadership and accountability would be strengthened across federal mental health and substance abuse programs.
“This bill means millions of dollars in new treatment, and it creates a pathway to a better integrated, more coordinated system for people with serious mental illness,” Murphy said. “I’m incredibly grateful for Sen. Cassidy’s partnership and friendship. He brought a doctor’s knowledge and a dogged determination to our effort, and a lot of people will be better off because of it.”