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We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help mental health support in Montana – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'January', 'Matt Kuntz']

Date: 2024-01-24  

When I first joined NAMI Montana 15 years ago, I didn’t understand the tight relationship between the overall economy, the state budget, and the life-saving care that individual Montana families receive across the state. That level of complexity has a way of obscuring hard truths. Some of the gaps in our state’s treatment system were easier to see and we’ve spent years working to address them.

One of the hardest lessons came in 2017. The state budget was deep in the red based upon a number of factors that had nothing to do with anyone in Montana. We were a small ship in the big ocean of the economy and tax policy. Both political parties agreed that hard sacrifices were necessary and one of the hardest sacrifices was the enactment of deep, system-changing cuts to mental health services.

The dominos that fell in Montana’s mental health treatment system at that time only picked up speed during the COVID pandemic and the workforce issues that came with it. The brutal lesson that NAMI Montana learned through that difficult process was that one really bad budget season can rip up the roots of a healthcare system and decades of hard-fought policy wins that helped build it.

In 2024, Montana has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a safety net for its critical mental health and developmental disabilities system. We have the opportunity to establish a $150 million behavioral health and developmental disabilities trust.

This opportunity opened up with an amazing budget surplus facing Gov. Greg Gianforte and the last legislature. They seized this opportunity to set aside $300 million in House Bill 872 to improve Montana’s mental health and developmental disabilities system during the course of the coming years.

Some of this one-time-only funding has been allocated towards critical investments in group homes, crisis services, and forensic care. These are essential investments by the 872 Commission and there are more essential investments to come.

But I pray that we do not forget the hard lesson of 2017. Safety net programs need safety nets to survive economic downturns. This is Montana’s opportunity to craft a financial safety net for its behavioral health and developmental disabilities systems by allocating $150 million of the House Bill 872 funding towards a permanent behavioral health and developmental disabilities trust. The income from that trust will boost our system in the good years and cushion it in the down years for decades to come.

NAMI Montana is excited to work with Gianforte and the Montana legislature on this generational opportunity. Let’s embrace it and create a lasting impact for a stronger Montana.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/01/24/we-have-a-once-in-a-generation-opportunity-to-help-mental-health-support-in-montana/

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