Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, introduced the Mental Health Matters Act (H.R. 10564), comprehensive legislation to help tackle our nation’s mental health crisis by increasing access to supports, services, and resources, for children, students, workers, and families by strengthening school-based behavioral health care, bolstering mental health parity protections, and ensuring access to mental health and substance use disorder benefits for workers and families.
“Mental health care is health care, and with one in five adults and one in six children experiencing mental illness each year, it’s imperative we take bold, comprehensive action to get quality support and resources to the millions of Americans in need,” said Congressman DeSaulnier. “Having lost my dad to suicide, I am honored to introduce legislation to help other families by employing evidence-based resources to tackle the mental health crisis plaguing this country.”
Specifically, this bill would:
- Increase the number of mental health professionals serving in high-need schools and help to build a pipeline of school-based mental health service providers;
- Help state educational agencies recruit and retain school-based mental health services providers at high-need public schools;
- Require institutions of higher education to increase transparency around the accommodations process and allow incoming students with existing documentation of a disability to access disability accommodations;
- Increase students’ access to evidence-based trauma support and mental health services through innovation by linking schools and districts with local trauma-informed support and mental health systems;
- Require the Department of Health and Human Services to identify evidence-based interventions to improve the health of children and staff in Head Start programs, and help Head Start agencies implement these interventions;
- Strengthen the capacity of the Department of Labor to ensure that private, employer-sponsored group health plans provide mental health and substance use disorder benefits under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA); and
- Strengthen the ability of people with private, employer-sponsored health and retirement plans to hold plan sponsors accountable when they are improperly denied mental health and substance use disorder benefits.
Congressman DeSaulnier is a senior member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He previously introduced this bill in 2022, and it went on to pass the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 220-to-205.
He needs to be the first patient
I wonder if it has occurred to Mark that improving mental health in California may result in Democrats losing a large percentage of their voters to the Republican Party.
This complete loser voted AGAINST the Laken Riley act. Unforgivable.
What a POS
Thank you, sir.
OK, Concord Rez is on the list.
Giving gender-confused children mental health services instead of catering to their delusions would reduce the number of mass shootings in this country.
Start with Congress.
More therapy and more therapists, with dubious results that often cause more harm than good. Mark needs to read Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why The Kid’s Aren’t Growing Up
More empty lip service – can somebody please tell him to just sit down? Whatever he says – people run the other way!
Doing what the Dems do best, create a problem, then introduce a bill to create the illusion
of fixing the problem. Legalizing and decriminalizing drugs, handing out free needles, and providing a “safe place” to shoot up, contributes to the mental deterioration our nation has
been experiencing in recent years. Destroyed brain cells do not repair themselves.
Messages of hate on TV, in the news and on social media is another factor. With that,
I mean the messages they have been sending out that the USA is a bad country, Trump is
a Hitler type dictator, and White Republicans are all uneducated deplorable pieces of
garbage. Ask yourself, why is it that there are so many angry and unhappy liberals? They
are the ones that riot in the streets, and destroy other people’s property, and they are the
ones with the mental health disorders. That’s not to say all liberals have a mental health disorder, and it’s not to say that non liberals don’t, but it certainly appears the libs are in
the majority.
just another nut job trying to self diagnose.