SAMHSA Is Taking ‘New Directions,’ Says Agency’s Leader

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is taking a new approach to helping people with serious mental illness (SMI), Elinore F. McCance-Katz, M.D., Ph.D., assistant secretary of mental health and substance use at the Department of Health and Human Services and head of SAMHSA, wrote in anarticle published today inPsychiatric Services in Advance. These efforts include a renewed focus on evidence-based, collaborative care and greater reliance on community resource providers, including peer support.SAMHSA is also prioritizing the training of health care practitioners, working toward providing free national technical assistance to modernize the care and delivery of services, and funding innovative programs to address major mental health issues, in particular the opioid epidemic, wrote McCance-Katz, the first psychiatrist to head SAMHSA.Mental health and substance use disorders affect more than 64 million Americans every year. “Never in the history of this country has there been a time of greater need for attention to these issues,” McCance-Katz wrote. “We are in the grip of an opioids crisis characterized by addiction and death such as we have never seen. Too often affecting our young people, the consequences of un treated mental illness and addiction have been tragic, frequently associated with violence and death.”The agency ’s new approach to SMI will be supported by the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee, a ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: addiction Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics Elinore McCance-Katz opioids Psychiatric Services in Advance samhsa SMI technical assistance training Source Type: research