Bipartisan push on mental health crisis that COVID worsened

A major effort to overhaul mental health care and substance use treatment in the U.S. is gaining traction as Congress and the Biden administration work on overlapping plans to address concerns across dividing lines of politics, geography and race. Top goals include responding to the mental health crisis among youth, increasing the supply of professional counselors and clinicians, narrowing a persistent gap between care for physical and mental health problems, and preserving access to telehealth services that proved their usefulness in the pandemic. COVID-19 has laid bare the need. “There is a very nonpartisan aspect to this — I wouldn’t even say it’s bipartisan,” said Hannah Wesolowski, NAMI CAO. “The need for a rapid scale-up of mental health services is one of the few issues where the parties can come together.”