Federally Appropriated Mental Health Care Funding Must Be Protected: Jennifer Snow, MPA

The brief but sweeping cancellation of nearly $2 billion in federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grants supporting mental health and substance use disorder services sent shockwaves through advocacy groups and community providers, underscoring how quickly access to care can be put at risk by federal policy decisions. Although the cuts were reversed within a day, the move raised urgent questions about the stability of community-based behavioral health programs and the protections in place to ensure congressional funding reaches the people it is intended to serve.

In this interview, The American Journal of Managed Care® spoke with Jennifer Snow, MPA, national director of government affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), about what those funding losses would have meant on the ground and where efforts can be focused to prevent similar disruptions in the future.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

If the SAMHSA funding cuts were to go into effect, how would access to mental health and substance use disorder care at the community level be impacted?

If $2 billion in grants were immediately terminated, we know that it would put an unknown number of lives at stake because it would immediately disrupt mental health and addiction programming in communities across the country. Whether you're talking suicide prevention efforts, family and peer recovery efforts, overdose prevention and treatment, mental health awareness and education, so many of these grants fund so many essential services in communities. It's not just numbers on paper. We know that they would have a real-life impact on people's ability to get services and to stay healthy and well within their community.

What policy or legislative actions does NAMI believe are necessary to prevent sudden disruptions to federally funded mental health and addiction services in the future?

Congress is currently debating the FY26 appropriations, so basically funding existing programs, new programs, and services for the next fiscal year. We're going to work with policymakers to make sure that when dollars are appropriated, that the administration gets them to communities in the way that Congress intended. Because really, the bottom line here is that Congress directed the administration to provide this funding across the country, and at least as of yesterday [December 14], it didn't seem that the administration was listening to the congressional intent there. So you know, we're going to continue to advocate for these programs within that funding, but also try to ensure that there are checks and balances so that the congressional intent is realized and effectuated.

Watch part 1 of the interview.