Support Mental Health & Addictions Recovery: Just Say No to Long-Term Institutional Care!
Americans with mental health and/or addiction problems deserve humane treatment and support in their communities not a return to the failed institutional and coercive approaches of the past. If you believe access to community-based mental health and addiction services should be protected and supported, add your voice to the petition calling on Congress to support recovery by going to https://tinyurl.com/43h3mh89
Mental health and addiction problems impact nearly every family across the nation. In any given year, one in five Americans experience these conditions. These problems cross all segments of the population. Outcomes of these conditions can be tragic and costly. Suicide takes over 49,000 lives each year and is the second leading cause of death for children ages 10-14. Over 85,000 people are lost to overdose deaths. The economic impact of behavioral health disorders in the U.S. is over $1 trillion annually.
There are also over 60 million Americans who are in recovery from these conditions. This includes people with serious mental illness and addictions. My name is Paolo del Vecchio, and I am a former senior federal official at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and I have been in recovery for 39 years.
People with these conditions, like myself and our families desperately need help attaining the essential supports to achieve and sustain recovery – access to health and behavioral health care, housing, employment, and peer support. Instead of help, the Trump administration has hindered opportunities for recovery including:
- Funding Cuts
- Cut over $800 billion in Medicaid and eliminated$1 billion in school mental health grants and froze $1 billion in COVID-19 behavioral health funding
- Proposed to cut over $1 billion at SAMHSA including funding for overdose prevention, harm reduction, and recovery support services
- Federal Staff and Agency Eliminations
- Fired up to 50% of SAMHSA staff who provide key leadership to improve care
- Proposed to eliminate SAMHSA and the HHS Administration for Community Livingand the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
- Harmful Policy Changes
- Eliminated all support for equity in behavioral health including ending the LGBTQI+ youth 988 suicide prevention lifeline.
- Curtailed enforcement of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act
- Issued an Executive Order that calls for the return to the failed past policies of long term institutionalization, criminalization and coercion while ending support for proven harm reduction and Housing First approaches.
These actions set U.S. mental health and addiction policy back decades. We know that recovery happens in community – not behind the walls of institutions and is best supported by individual choice not coercion. Long term hospitalization is a failure of our political and health systems to support recovery. Institutions, as has been shown time and time again, too often devolve to inhumane care including abuse and neglect. We must not return to the days of snake pits and warehouses – we need care ‘back home’ not in ‘backwards.’
We can do better. We call on our elected members of Congress to support recovery by:
- Funding community-based mental health and addictions services including recovery support services, Housing First and harm reduction approaches,
- Retaining key federal agencies-including SAMHSA- along with staff, and,
- Blocking all expansion of long-term institutional and coercive care.
Act today as lives are in the balance and Congress will soon be acting on the budget and other issues. By signing this petition, you are speaking out and demanding Congress support recovery.