As we reflect on 2022, we have many legislative accomplishments to celebrate and significant momentum to carry forward into 2023. Thank you to all our advocacy partners — these successes would not have been possible without your help!
We are celebrating key wins that reduced barriers to timely treatment. Treatment Advocacy Center helped pass bills that made significant improvements to civil commitment law in seven states! We engaged in the regulatory process in Maryland to establish the first-ever legal definition of “danger” for the purposes of involuntary commitment. Treatment Advocacy Center’s research was also used to inform ambitious programs in California and New York City to help those with untreated severe mental illness get treatment.
We made progress against the discriminatory federal Medicaid Institutions for Mental Disease exclusion. A federal waiver for SMI was approved in Maryland, and steps have been taken toward securing waivers in California, Missouri, and New York. Treatment Advocacy Center also supported two federal bills to repeal the IMD once and for all, and we look forward to continuing this fight in 2023.
We advocated for critical mental health provisions in the federal budget, including the reauthorization and expansion of the assisted outpatient treatment grant program and requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study on the cost of serious mental illness (including the costs to family members and caregivers and SMI’s effects on employment). We also made sure SMI was included in congressional discussions around priorities for the new federal agency, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, and will continue to do so moving forward.
Thank you to each person who supported us in these efforts by participating in one of our advocacy campaigns. We distributed 12 action alerts, and you sent 1,119 messages directly to decision-makers in 2022!
To read the full article, see Take Action - Treatment Advocacy Center
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