Mental health crisis gets bipartisan attention

WASHINGTON — A major effort to overhaul care for people in the United States with mental health and drug problems 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 have proved useful during the pandemic.

COVID-19 has laid bare the need.

The U.S. was already in a mental health crisis, with suicide rates climbing and chronic problems accessing treatment. The opioid epidemic had a firm grip on cities and small towns. But the coronavirus made everything worse.

An analysis of government data found that about 4 in 10 adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in the first year of the pandemic, compared with about 1 in 10 before that. More than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses from May 2020 to April 2021, a record for lethality, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are working to produce bipartisan legislation this summer.

Leaders of the Finance Committee have enlisted pairs of senators — one Democrat, one Republican — to develop policy ideas in five broad areas. The committee has jurisdiction over major government health insurance programs, while the other committee oversees private insurance and public health.

“I think everybody understands the challenge of threading the needle in a 50-50 Senate,” said the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. But, he added, “the urgency is different. … More people are falling between the cracks.”

President Joe Biden released a comprehensive mental health and drug treatment plan as part of his State of the Union message.