Missouri Policy Spotlight: Behavioral Health
By: Dr. Ramon Martinez III
What is behavioral health?
Behavioral health care is any service that aids in managing the behaviors affecting your mental or physical well-being. These can include therapies aimed at emotional management, disorders in behaviors like eating or substance abuse, and cognitive illnesses.
States around the country have utilized a range of strategies to improve behavioral health and reduce inequities in healthcare access. One approach emphasizes school-based delivery of mental health care as a way to reach at-risk youth. Research indicates that a variety of school-based intervention programs may help reduce the risk of suicide. Successful approaches for school-based interventions include recruitment, training, and provision of screening resources for school social workers and nurses, and student-based training and awareness programs.
Learn More: See our Science Notes on Suicide Education and Prevention Programs and Mental Health Awareness Programs in Schools.
At the community level, three billion dollars in funds were allocated under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to be distributed as block grants to support increases in the federal Medicaid matching rate for mobile crisis intervention services, to increase funds for home and community-based centers, and to support regional call centers, crisis receiving facilities, and mobile crisis response teams.
Learn More: See our Science Note on Behavioral Healthcare Deficits and Interventions.
Behavioral health legislation in Missouri
In 2022, the Missouri legislature filed several bills related to behavioral health. Senate Bill 681, which passed this year, requires schools to include information about the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on student identification cards. It also requires high schools to provide mental health awareness training for students. Senate Bill 710, which was also signed by the Governor, contains a provision allowing up to two compassionate care visitors tor the mental well-being of patients in end-of-life care.
Senate Bill 690, which did not pass, contained provisions to deliver mental health services to foster children, legalizing the distribution of sterile syringes to those who use injectable drugs in order to reduce the risk of transmitting bloodborne pathogens, and removing certain requirements for civil detention of those experiencing a mental health crisis.
Suicide prevention and interventions were a particular area of legislative interest in Missouri this past legislative session. Several bills were filed aimed at providing crisis hotline information to students and teacher education (HB 2136, HB 2238, SB 1142, SB 1057), tasking the Veterans Commission to expand prevention efforts (HB 2455), and increasing penalties for individuals who could be proven to promote a suicide attempt (HB 1496). These bills did not pass in 2022, but the House has announced the creation of the Interim Committee on Veterans Mental Health and Suicide to consider related issues before the 2023 regular legislative session.
Research Highlight: More than half of states have reported a more than 30% increase in the overall number of suicides since the year 2000.
MOST Policy Initiative has provided legislators with information related to several behavioral health policies.
Mental health parity, which is the equal coverage of mental health benefits under medical insurance as that of physical health, garnered attention in Missouri in 2021, resulting in the passage of HB 604. Our Science Note on Mental Health Parity found that nationwide, states that passed legislation for mental health parity increased the treatment rate for substance use disorders, decreased the suicide rate, and reduced traffic fatalities involving intoxicated drivers.
Research Highlight: Mental health diagnoses have increased after the passage of mental health parity laws, suggesting increases in early identification on conditions that would otherwise go unscreened.
Substance abuse also continues to be of particular interest in the Missouri legislature . One bill that ultimately passed was HB 2162 which allowed the Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services to authorize pharmacists to substance abuse treatments under a standing order, and allocates funding toward opioid addiction treatments and services. Our Science Note on Substance Abuse and Naltrexone Hydrochloride found that addiction mitigation drugs, such as Naltrexone, can prevent relapse for opioids by as much as 61% after a 6-month follow up.
Research Highlight: As recently as 2018, 1 in 56 deaths in Missouri were attributable to opioid overdoses.
To learn more, you can find all of our mental health-related Science Notes here.
