March 9, 2023

Tonight President Biden will address the nation and discuss his FY24 budget proposal.
See below for early information regarding the plan that apparently focuses on the needs of Americans struggling with mental health and substance use disorder. That’s good news!

On the other hand, the Workforce Development number seems quite low, even if it is all directed at expanding the BH workforce.
Time will tell.

Below the article re: the federal budget proposal, please find another article from Politico focusing on overdose rates in NYC for the first half of 2022.

Have a good evening.
Lauri

Mental Health Would Get A Boost From Biden’s FY 2024 Budget

By Ruth Reader, Politico, 3/9/23

President Biden wants Congress to put big dollars into mental health care.

The budget calls for bigger bucks for the administration’s roll out of Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, more money for HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the 988 crisis line, and an extra $200 million for the National Institute of Mental Health. It also boosts funding for the National Institutes of Health to facilitate more spending on research into the opioid and mental health crises.

Congress will ultimately have its say in how much to spend, and the Biden budget is highly unlikely to survive intact. But key lawmakers share the president’s desire to combat mental illness.

Suicide Prevention:

— SAMHSA would dedicate $836 million to the 988 crisis hotline, an increase of $334 million.

— HHS is asking for $100 million for mobile crisis response, an $80 million increase.

— CDC would get $80 million its suicide reduction efforts, an increase of $50 million.

Substance Use Disorder:

— Biden’s budget proposes $10.8 billion for SAMHSA, an increase of $3.3 billion. Within that, mental health services would get a $2.2 billion raise.

— The proposal includes $5.7 billion for prevention and treatment activities, up $1.3 billion.

— The proposal bumps up funding for mental health at the Indian Health Service by $25 million and funding for alcohol and substance abuse by $17 million.

Schools:

— The budget requests a $52 million bump for CDC’s What Works in Schools program, which strengthens mental health programming.

Infrastructure:

— The budget proposes $1.7 billion for SAMHSA’s Community Mental Health Block Grant, an increase of $645 million.

— The budget has $553 million for the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics grant program, a pop of $168 million.

Workforce Development:

— An additional $190 million is slated to train about 18,000 behavioral health providers for a total budget of $387 million. Of that, Biden envisions using $28 million for recruiting and training new providers in underserved communities.

— The budget for rural health includes $10 million for a new Rural Health Clinic Behavioral Health Initiative to expand access to mental health services in rural communities.

City’s drug overdose deaths rise, approaching a new record
BY MAYA KAUFMAN | 03/09/2023 04:51 PM EST
NEW YORK — Nearly 1,400 people died of drug overdoses in New York City during the first half of 2022, according to newly released provisional data from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Deaths in 2021 and 2022 are still pending final confirmation, but the new figures indicate that last year may have been the city’s deadliest year on record amid the drug overdose epidemic.

There were 1,269 fatal overdoses in the first half of 2021. By the end of that year nearly 2,700 people had died of overdoses, a toll that the Health Department called “unprecedented.”

The new data also show continuing geographic disparities, with Bronx neighborhoods seeing the highest rates of overdose deaths. Of the New Yorkers who died of an overdose in the first half of 2022, at least 323 were Bronx residents and 255 were Brooklyn residents.

The number of deaths by race and ethnicity was not included in the new provisional data, but Black New Yorkers have historically accounted for a disproportionate share of the city’s overdose deaths.

Opioids, particularly the synthetic opioid fentanyl, are involved in the vast majority of fatal drug overdoses, according to city health officials.

What’s next: Under Mayor Eric Adams’ new mental health agenda, which was unveiled last week, the city is aiming to reduce overdose deaths 15 percent by 2025.

To meet that goal, Adams said the city will expand non-fatal overdose response efforts to at least three additional hospital emergency departments, expand services at 14 syringe exchange programs and install at least four vending machines that will dispense the overdose reversal drug naloxone in neighborhoods with high overdose rates.

Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said the city is also exploring ways to allow its two existing supervised injection sites, which are privately run, to operate 24 hours a day and open three more locations. State and federal law restrict government funding of the sites, which are also known as overdose prevention centers.